cinemaeye
12-20-2006, 03:35 PM
I have built a lot of sites on my own, but all of them have been from scratch. Now I am in the process of taking over an existing site. My interest in this site is in the subject matter, rather than really monetizing it. I thought I might document the process of taking over and "fixing" an existing site that has fallen into disrepair... and ask for advice along the way.
The site is MicroCinemaScene.com (http://www.microcinemascene.com). It focused on no-budget filmmaking. It currently averages about 1000 uniques a day w/ about 3,000 page views. It was once a pretty vibrant community, but it has really died off. The owners were going to shut it down, so I volunteered to re-energize it and keep it going.
Now I am faced with a few issues and thought I would ask you guys...
1. The SEO and CMS are terrible. It's currently running on something called "Article Manager" and you can tell by the URLs, it needs serious help. I want to move this into a different CMS but I have never done something like this before. Does anyone have experience with "Article Manager"? Also, I am leaning towards Expression Engine for the new CMS.
2. Forums are on something called invision. They get spammed to hell everyday. Even though, they aren't very active at the moment, I want to take the risk and move to vBulletin. Any thoughts on this?
3. I am going to be completely rebuilding and re-architecting the site. What's the best way to do this while leaving the existing site running?
Any help would be greatly appreciated. I will post progress reports here as I go. The goal is to have some kind of relaunch by late January. Thanks!
The site is MicroCinemaScene.com (http://www.microcinemascene.com). It focused on no-budget filmmaking. It currently averages about 1000 uniques a day w/ about 3,000 page views. It was once a pretty vibrant community, but it has really died off. The owners were going to shut it down, so I volunteered to re-energize it and keep it going.
Now I am faced with a few issues and thought I would ask you guys...
1. The SEO and CMS are terrible. It's currently running on something called "Article Manager" and you can tell by the URLs, it needs serious help. I want to move this into a different CMS but I have never done something like this before. Does anyone have experience with "Article Manager"? Also, I am leaning towards Expression Engine for the new CMS.
2. Forums are on something called invision. They get spammed to hell everyday. Even though, they aren't very active at the moment, I want to take the risk and move to vBulletin. Any thoughts on this?
3. I am going to be completely rebuilding and re-architecting the site. What's the best way to do this while leaving the existing site running?
Any help would be greatly appreciated. I will post progress reports here as I go. The goal is to have some kind of relaunch by late January. Thanks!