Just climb back up, listen to the members you've got and try get people back with professionalism and what they want. Just post more and more threads, but useful ones, not ones you'd find on every other forum.
Your forum cannot be going through a bad stage when it is this young. That is what you need to learn. All new forums go through this, it's not a down stage.. It's natual stage of it's development. The only thing you need to keep it going is simple dedication.
I think a new theme would be key for you though, even if it's another free one. I don't know about other people but I have always hated that theme. It feels very messy.
Another suggestion is organizing the forums a little better.
Exmaple..
Remove YouTube Uploads. It's way to general, realistcitly won't get a lot of use.
Another is:
"Hosting & Server Management
Talk about all aspects of website design. All included but nothing limited to, HTML & CSS."
You have that in "Promotion" yet it's to do with discussion, not promotion.
Another is:
"Coding Talk and Help" You have it in administration but it really isn't to do with administration. It is programming. Administration is to do with running forums, generally.
1. Change template of the website, it makes the forum look renewed.
2. Add something unique, there are millions of forums exact as yours add something different to it.
3. Your forum targets admin forum owners, those forum owners have exact same site as yours so you need to target a different audience to be successful.
If you still want to pursue with it, then best bet would be to create lots of contests, and lots of unique content.
Several content and contest ideas:
1. Create either a blog or a news archive with admin tips and tricks, you can find article writers for as low as $1 per article the article wont be excellent but it will be good.
2. Create unique contests, like best advertisement video of the forum, or most voted community.
3. I agree you can give away .com domain names but what you can also give out is those Google Adwords coupons, that you can find on ebay for $1-$2 which offers the person $50 of free Google Adwords credit, which they can use to advertise their website on Google.com
You won't need more themes, as 1 is enough. And as i said to you, i did a darker version of the theme in addition to lighter version. So you already got 2 themes.
Try and offer something your potential users would want, maybe a contest or giveaway.
And also, make tonnes of threads that would require replies from people, maybe asking opinions, or something of that sort. Your post count will rise and people will see the site has activity. I did that and it worked for me 🙂
Honestly, all you would have to do is promote, do exchanges, and post like mad on your forum. Eventually, there will be more activity. Believe me, I went through the same thing with Promotion Box 😉
