Popular website being abandoned, opportunity to replace?
I know of a popular, well established website containing reviews and user forums that was recently purchased and then rewritten. The community has completely rejected this rewrite and have basically abandoned the website. Traffic is way down, participation in forums has noticeably decreased except for complaints and requests to restore. Users have fled to another public forum website but are not happy with this new location.
I feel there is an opportunity to establish a new website, starting with the forums, to bring back the functionality everyone previously enjoyed. Later monetize with reviews.
This seems like a great opportunity to create a landing page with a simple email and text box for suggestions and post a link on the public forum to gauge interest in a replacement website. If there's enough interest, create a website that mimics the old website' forum.
The challenge will be to not offend the new public forum users, not irritate the old website owners to the point they might take legal action, and not copy the old website where someone can claim copyright infringement.
What would you do here?
You are not referencing DesignerNews are you? :)
I would reach out directly to some of the disgruntled users and ask what they want. Would they accept a new site etc?
I'm going to reach out with a very carefully crafted message to gauge their reception to the idea. No it's not DesignerNews but that's interesting there's another example. Thanks for the reply.