Mark: Can you post an explanation of the comment that was made about the "old site being torched"? Was it a physical thing that spurred the creation of the new site & the demise of the old site?
Suggestion: The old site was so popular because it very easy & simple to use (KISS keep it simple for the ...). Bob and others were in a slow period and could DAILY provide valuable and knowledgable advise. Now the spring/summer seasons allow very little free time for pond experts/managers. So the board suffers somewhat because of a lack of experts attending. However w/ the very heavy usethe old board became too lengthy & unyeildly to find a previous topic or search for an old post.
IDEA: consider using the old format & after a time have the old posts/topics archived into categories.
One possible(?) way of having this done automatically is to require the poster to input a key word or words when creating the post. The program/software "archiver" would then file them by topic/keyword.
Another way would be to manually have someone archive each one after a set time period. If someone reviews/scans all topics, an archiving keyword or number could be assigned at that time. The "archiver" would then file the post.
Posters of new topics should be instructed or automatically required to scan the old topic archives first to minimize duplicate questions & recreating the wheel for the people answering the questions. Maybe an auto scanner of keywords would apply here.
"Experts" answering questions with enough details to make the answer meaningful and useful requires quite a bit of their "free" time which is what many of the experts are often times short of "free" time. The board should not waste their time by answering the same type of question over and over. Their free help should be protected & nurtured so they stick around and not get frustrated; kind of like catch and release.
There should be a set of instructions/rules and guides for the users, esp. if the board is "busy" with many buttons or icons.
B.Cody aka Breezy

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America's Journal of Pond Management