Reviving a dead forum

[Oldiesmann]

Years ago I started a forum for Archie Comics. It happened to be perfect timing - I was looking to start a new forum and it was something that interested me that there wasn't a forum for yet. It was also before Facebook took off (this was around 2005/2006 or so - I started out on a subdomain and purchased a domain for it once it took off). The forum was going strong up until a few years ago and survived a server crash that caused me to have to start over years later (hard drive failure on the VPS apparently - I didn't have backups because the host claimed those were done automatically, but I found out after the fact that it somehow hadn't gotten enabled on my account). Unfortunately I got busy and didn't keepu up with it much, and it's all but dead now save for one person who posts about their reviews of the company's latest offerings.

The company has just announced a new special edition comic in collaboration with filmmaker/actor Kevin Smith that will see a crossover between the classic Archie characters and Smith's Jay and Silent Bob characters, and I think this is a good time to attempt to breathe some life into the forum again, especially now that I've got more free time to post and keep up with what the company is up to.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I know social media is all the rage these days but I'm hesitant to close the forum after all these years, especially because there's so much content on there.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

If you have a database backup from before the crash that contains member info you can import it into a temporary install and send a newsletter out to all the former members inviting them back to the forum.

[Oldiesmann]

The crash happened back in 2016. The site hasn't died because of that - it died partly because I got busy and didn't have time to keep posting about new stuff from Archie Comics. I've got more free time now and would like to try and save the site if I can as it was my first really successful site and I'd hate to see it die off at this point.