Don't you hate qualified endorsements? But that's what I'm going to give, but not to discourage you. First have a talk with Excalibur Bane, who maintained the absolutely great "
*** List Of Modifications For v1.3 ***" thread in the SH4 Mods forum to find out how time-consuming it would be and get his pointers for any challenges present. I believe in learning from other people's mistakes as much as possible.
Then working up a list of the modders responsible for various mods and unloading part of the job on them to alert you to updates and making sure you have immediate links to their updates. Nothing kills a mod site quicker than outdated mods.
The worst part will be finding and assembling the minor and obscure mods. Many of those will be orphans, but still potentially useful, like the mod that put the lubber's line on the compass. You could have an orphan mod section with such mods not modified for patch 1.4 so modders could update those that are requested. It might be the most work, but a good collection of up-to-date working minor mods is what will ensure the success of a site like you propose.
I'm leaving out a lot. Excalibur Bane is your expert, I'm just a big mouth. But there are my qualifications. It will be a challenge to have a site external to SUBSIM that generates a lot of interest and traffic from here. It's hard enough for aaronblood to generate interest in his incredible free MoBo Electronic Maneuvering Board software and it's hosted right here on SUBSIM in its own forum.
Somehow you gotta be indispensible, and I think the minor mods angle is the way to do it. Then you have to have a lot of buzz around SUBSIM to remind people you're out there.