We all like to be unique in some ways regarding how we want our forum to look and feel, and it can be anything.
For me, I have the following that makes my forum feel a bit more "special":
I have three custom BBCodes which are "Highlight", "Tooltip" and "iCode" (think of it as a miniature version of the "Code" BBCode)
For any of the avatarless members, they're greeted with a Gravatar based on their username (although only seen for forum posts and private messages currently).
In the past though, the forum had a custom-made skin where it was imageless and members were able to select between the light and dark versions of it (by a profile field), and that was the forum's main feature and was renowned for it (especially when it had pushed Jcink's capabilities to the limit). However, it's sadly long gone when the creator of it suddenly vanished and took it with him, but I hope to have a new skin living up to its legacy - but better.
It's easy to add a bunch of perks and unique features to your forum, especially when it's new.
You want to attract new members and new things might be a way to do it, right?
However, it's easy to kill your user experience because of that. That's because extra features mean extra steps to do things on your forum.
So, I guess my idea of perks these days is to keep the community as simple as possible to use, keep it fast loading, and focus on the main feature, the forums.
I try to focus most my efforts of creating really good discussions each day.
My forum has a $100 posting contest until October 19th. Members can also user their points(poker coins) to buy passwords to poker tournaments with real money prizes. We have a weekly poker game with a $25 prizepool. Passwords to members that purchase them with poker coins.
Another perk my forum has is the built-in imgZB image uploader, although I've been thinking of replacing it (as I'm not really a fan of imgZB as much now).
