Settling help.

[Fidgety]

There is one more thing you can do before wasting silver on nails for signs. I know buying nails is a pain when a noob.
Go to the town, zoom to a height where you can get a good view of the town but still get good details. Take a screen shot.
Return to the town a whenever you have time, and take another screen shot. Compare the screen shots and look for evidence of activity.
If you see activity, then do the sign. You don't have to waste silver on nails this way and leave your homestead secret out in the wild.

[Strakknuva225]

Wooden Signs use wood plugs not nails.

[jakhollin]

Wooden Signs use wood plugs not nails.

Both of you like nails way to much.... Fidgety so much he wants to use them on signs.

As for TJHooker. My suggestion is move again. Find you another spot. If the town is alive and you eventually put a town down they will probably see you as a threat. If the town is abandoned someone else may notice and raid it depending on its defenses and your spot may be a pass time waiting for the TBF. And if the town is already raided then I am sure someone has an eye on it. The name of the town sounds familiar. If it is a town in between Providence and Limers fort than there is a very strong chance it is the one I am thinking of and the townbell there is ruins of a different town and was destroyed long ago which I would again suggest you move somewhere else.

[Trismegistus]

Some simple ways to find out if a claim is active are fires burning(cementation furnace, fireplace, etc), coal stacks burning, timber piles that aren't ready to harvest yet, etc. Look for structures that take a few days to complete and are still in that process. However, even if it appears to be inactive, it may just be a player that got burned out, is in school, is in jail for 30 days, blah blah, and they will be back sooner or later.

I think the best determining factor of whether you should move or not is your tolerance of non-safety. Whether they'll hate you, love you, attack you, someone else already attacked them and will soon attack you, it's all an odds calculation. There are no guarantees in the lumberwoods.