Should you ever bring a site back?

If there's an audience for what you're doing, it's worth bringing back--provided that you don't have drama waiting in the wings, and you still have passion for the concept you were nurturing to begin with. Chances are, you shut that site down for a reason. Beating a dead horse might not bring you back to loving that place again, nor your members, old or new. If anything, it might be a better idea to take that old concept, trim away the fat, throw something refreshing and inviting on it, and repost it under new pretenses and a new name.

Even then, though, you might as well just come up with an entirely new concept to play with.

 

In my experience, if you close a site and try and bring it back, any members you try and invite back will likely be skeptical about the longevity of things, even if they don't say so. Usually they've moved on from the world you've created and can feel like the opposite of closure to go back.

 

I'm unsure. I haven't ever tried it, personally, but I wonder if it's the nostalgia factor that makes people try again. I mean, I've seen other sites do it, but I'm unsure whether they've ever been successful in the revival. I can think of a few sites I've seen try, and fail again over and over.