Need advice in taking over an existing site

[cinemaeye]

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. 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!

[Chris]

Not sure on 1, other than to say yes, SE friendly URLs are a must.

#2, no problems there, there are built in importers for invision to VB.

#3, develop it all on the site in a new directory, then, when everything is working as you like, move the new directory to the root directory.

[Webfu]

1. - I would recommend druple.org - With them you have no shortage of programmers and its a really slick CMS.

2. - Don't know how to do this but I would do it whatever it takes to switch.

3. - I would suggest the same as above, build the content on the server then rename directories. Unless you have the luxury of being able to use a testing server first.

[deronsizemore]

I've recently been turned on to a CMS called Expression Engine at www.pmachine.com

For 150 bucks you basically a whole package, plus their forum software which isn't to shabby from what I've heard (although it's no VB). Give it a look see.