I agree with you-- my poison last time I tried to develop the site was that I was thinking too far out there, and it was too big for a first step.  The best thing to do is prop this thing up with some new code, but aim to just recreate the functionality of what we've already got, and keep the look and feel and everything.  That would be a beautiful base for helping everyone to contribute.  I think that's more effective, for everyone.

Of course, I've got some ideas for nifty features, like custom forum searches as RSS feeds, so that I can find out about topics without having to read each and every forum post

I'll be sure to keep my finger on the pulse of the site this year, considering the news about the hosting.  It sounds like we've got a lot of people who are willing to chip into the money required to keep the site going, but it would still be nice to arrange things in a forward-looking way.