I have an archived site, and to archive it I just set permissions for writhing to it by users, mods to 0. That way they could still be seen and read, but not have any new posts. I don't know if there is actually a way to archive a board (other than just saving the DB somewhere) unless you just turn off write permissions to it.
So I would say to ask him not to archive it if there is still an interest in them.
(Understand though I honestly am not the expert on that, I am about 80% sure this is true, but there are others here that know way more than I do).
Dunny
