The new forum seems to work fine
looks like those 502/504 errors are history.

However, there were years of posts on the old forum which was a very valuable resource to search for problems and solutions that others had experienced.

I don't know why the old forum was acting up though it appeared to be infected with dozens if not hundreds or even thousands of fake bot 'users'.

Could it be possible to bring the old forum back in read-only format?

Personally, I'd vote for a clean start!  A fresh start, every now and then, can be a good thing.

As part of the clean start I'd like email notifications to work.