Quick update about the reasons behind the changes. The core software the forum runs on is not written by us it is external. It is a fairly bare bones forum software (be design), we then add a significant amount of functions / features both via in house modules and external 3rd party ones.
We've been putting off upgrading for as long as possible. It's not a fun process as I'm sure you can imagine and changes are rarely welcomed, so it needs to be justified. However, the core software at the heart of the 'old' forum has not been actively maintained or developed since Dec 2019, that includes patches for security flaws. We have been maintaining it as best as possible in house in the meantime. The 'old' forum now will also not run on the most recent versions of the underlying software (PHP7.4/8) running on the webservers, so we cannot take advantage of security and performance improvement. The highest version of the the webserver software it will run on (PHP7.3) is now also end of life and not supported. Google moaned about the structure of the underlying pages using outdated markings that would soon not be recognised. You get the idea.
The core software at the heart of this 'new' forum is the next version of the 'old' forum from the same developers, while different it is a progression of the 'old' forum. What it definitely is not, is purely a new visual skin over the top of the same software as before for the sake of being more 'facebooky'.
Of course, none of this information helps you enjoy or use it any better, so if you would like to leave constructive points about how it could be improved, or features that are now missing, I am working my way through things. Overall, the update isn't complete and I'm continuing to implement other things / setup things that haven't been done in the first main wave of the update (e.g. thanks/like isn't complete / media is still in progress etc etc).