If it ain't broke don't fix it

I’m part of a certain community (which shall remain unnamed) whose site got refactored.

And since that, the community and conversation is pretty much dead.

The site is slow. Most features don’t work. Nobody uses it anymore. Nobody comments on it. Development had halted. It’s a shadow of its past glorious self.

All because the owner decided to switch tech stack.

If he had just left it on alone, maybe the community would still be somewhat alive. We were pretty happy with the old site tbh. Nobody wanted change. More people were still engaged with the product back then.

I like the site and the community. But now, the party’s over.

Sad.

I saw this happened more than once with other products and indie hackers. Too common.

Goes to show - don’t refactor, don’t change tech stack, unless users asked for it or you really really need to, and you’re able to see it through all the way, and onboard the community back.

There’s a reason why they say if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
Sometimes you can build your way into a dead end.

Or worse.