Good Question!!

[CannibalCorpse_Zemi]

wat are many ways of getting my server known..and wat are many ways i could advertise my server??

[hexitnow]

you can advertise it online. One of the best ways probably is telling your friends. Your friends will tell their friends, and so on and so forth. Also if you run a great server with people that dont abuse admin you wont need much advertising at all.

[kimball]

Friendly, regular players are the best way to get attention drawn to your server, also creating an online forum for players to chat and disccuss things well not ingame is a good way to encourage a community based around your server. Maybe even a loose family-like clan, if your up to it could get some regular players into your server everynight and from there it grows.

[eXaXXion]

actually the best way to populate your server is to have really good backbone carriers. I made a css server 2 days ago and it's been filled with more than 20 people 24/7. I didn't advertise it at all, but I realized that most people who were playing on my server had less than 30 ping. I'm pretty sure most people arrange servers in the order of increasing ping when they search, showing the best pinged servers to your location.

I use Savvis, Level 3, Internap, Telia, Sprint, Time Warner, Broadwing just to name a few.

[Hollanda]

Good backbones depends on location. In Hollanda everybody can have a 5 ms ping.

What will work: join the server with all your friends/clanmates all the time, don't join any other server. Run good maps, don't abuse admin powers. Make sure the server isn't overbooked and plays fluent. Overboost the server to 500 fps/high tickrate.

Also a good one: make sure custom downloads go fast (sv_downloadurl) + make sure players don't need to download to many custom (bullshit) sounds.

[candy-man]

Your server can have the best pings in the world, but you still need to be able to keep players connected.

As the others have said, having a group of friends/clanmates play on the server frequently will help it get popular. An empty server isn't likely to fill up. People want to play against others . After you get some regulars, they'll tell their friends and soon you'll have lots of people joining the server.

I wouldn't actively advertised the server (spamming IRC channels, forums, etc). It'll be seen for what it is; spam. If I see someone spam their server's IP, I'll avoid it at any cost. If you really want to try and spread the IP via the web, try putting a small, non-intrusive message into your signature on gaming sites you frequent.

After people have connected, your admins, mapcycle and plugins/mods are what will keep people connected and playing.