well i found out the hard way after we put the server to performance testing there were reasons why no one had done things we were doing 
but those are all things I've come up with a solution for now.
just to give you guys an example, since the new site has multiple sublevels you cant just do a query based on parent we originally we querying based on 5 tables for the menus (5 levels possible) -- so for any 1 you find its parents and children. Well to make a long story short we are up to over 600 menu items now and it was bad original design. So now we built a menu caching system so the menus are generate a cache that is stored in ram whenever something is added to the site (since the menus show the # of items as well). Also we had to become regexp experts to create new list server archives that hide all responses in shortened divs. Im very proud of where we are right now just very upset we basically lost a year of work with the original group. What gained was understanding the limits of many technologies and making decisions on how all the pages will flow and function. So now things are being done to support the next few years of growth.
Consider this Alias PA -> Maya during the Softimage times. Its just a whole different thing trying to catch up with the world. Right now we might feel like everyone is using Softimage but when we come out with our Maya we will build on to it for a year straight and everyone else will be years off before they can try to catch up with their XSI.
all our competitors are beating us with news, reviews, interviews.. once we have the new site up i'll be able to focus time on getting the best. the kind we had in highend magazine which very few sites have that level of depth - mixing tutorial style with article. Plus our new tutorial system and tutorial partnerships i have with dvd companies will populate and catch us up there.
im frustrated as hell, but have a good plan in place so once its going we should see things really grow.