One bit of advice, RBCP,
You said the PLA Forums are mostly dead now.
Have you ever considered redesigning the PLA Forums as a Drupal site? You could use the "OneAllSocialLogin" module to allow users to login using their Facebook, Google, OpenID, LinkedIn, Yahoo, or other major social media account. This might revitalize the PLA Forums, since users could contribute without having to start up a special account with phonelosers.com. I don't know much about Simple Machine Forums, but I know a lot about Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress. Allowing users to login with Facebook alone could increase participation significantly, since everybody's moved over to Facebook.
Just a thought, man. You said the PLA Forums were dead, but there's no reason for that. Integrating Facebook login could bring in hundreds of extra participants who might not otherwise participate if they were required to start up a separate account with a unique password and username. I don't know if this is possible with Simple Machine Forums, but I know it's possible with Drupal.
Saul Goodman