Biggest problem I have is that everyone is using Discourse these days, so I’m a member of four different fora that all look alike. The dark border here definitely helps reduce that confusion.
So we’ve lost about 5 or so days of posts?
Finally, I don’t need to use my custom Pandoc > BBcode tooling to post on the L&L forums any more 
— I also use several other discourse forums so this feels very ‘consistent’ and discourse is more flexible and modern (as demonstrated by the mobile interface etc.)
@AmberV – I can confirm that all posts (4 to 5 in total?) disappeared from scrive’s recent problem solving question: Limit on number of References? — strangely the slightly older thread also lost all replies: Scrivomatic and Pictures — I assume this thread should have been archived before the transition?
I am not overly fond of the tagging system replacing some of the sub-subforums.
Where can I find a user manual for the new forum software? I’m finding this very frustrating.
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What are you finding most frustrating? Discourse uses both categories and tags to organise topics that are composed of individual posts. Categories are similar to “forums” or “subforums” in BB-type interfaces, in that each topic can only be found in one category. But via tagging a topic can belong to many “smart folders” / collections (to borrow the macOS / Scrivener terminology). I think this makes people who are used to the rigid hierarchical navigation of older forum software uneasy. But categories should help you get centered, ignore the tags for now. You can set the default “view” when you first open the forums in the settings depending on your preferences.
This is the best user guide I could find: Discourse New User Guide - faq - Discourse Meta
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Well, I hope I’m not alone in liking it.
My nearly 76-year-old eyes have no trouble with the type density… actually I find it easier to read than the former version. Also, I’m not averse to change so I’ll just get on with it and get used to the differences.
(And my general system-level keyboard shortcuts work here, which is great! 
)
Mark
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As someone else said above, I thought I had been tossed into an old L&L forum site using an old school software. But I find this new one easier to read. Text in the previous one was was too gray, and the font too fine, to be easily read, even when zoomed in. So that much is an improvement in my world. Thanks for making the text size variable.
But it seems that the subforums are not as prominent?
Congratulations!
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Subforums seem to be implemented now as categories, which are strictly hierarchical. A given thread can only belong to a single category.
You can also tag posts with tags, which work much like keywords in Scrivener – you can have multiple tags, they’re non-exclusive, etc. I don’t believe that the average forum user can create our own tags, though.
I like the new forum. Thanks.
I’ll look at that FAQ—thanks! But for now, is there any way to do what I did in the old forum with “Mark forums read”? Right now the only way for a … topic, I suppose, to come up as unread is for me to actually physically go and scroll through it. Not OK. I want to mark stuff read.
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From I could read, the Discourse software does not seem to provide that function – the developers have a different philosophy.
Well, that stinks, the old forum philosophy suited my brain better.
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Yeah, mine too.
It’s not clear to me how to find new posts in forums (categories?) without visiting them. That’s way too many click-and-waits for me. (And the Latest feature includes loads of forums (categories?) that I’m not interested in, so potentially too much noise.)
I can see that this approach works from a support mindset, but from a community mindset, it’s… well, not very good.
Ah well, L&L have been moving away from community-building for some years now, this seems like a logical direction for that approach.
there is a “New” button at top.
Interesting. What prompts you to say so?
The lack of a date on the post display in the list, showing when the thread was started, is a step backwards imo. All we get now is how long ago the last reply went on. I’d prefer both bits of information.
You can’t tell if it’s a newer thread or if some bot has been running through on a Necro binge. I used to skip threads that showed the original post date as years ago. Maybe that was just me? 
Nope. Not just you. I’d check the date, and immediately move to another forum to do the same. Of course, I only visited 3 or 4, not all of them. Whatever. I’ll be doing a lot less forum checking for posts that I wanted to investigate. On the plus side, it’s more time for writing.
Do go into your preferences and check the Categories option – you can specify specific Categories that you want to watch or track, and those affect what ones you see under Latest/etc.
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Now I have new excuse to procrastinate - learn how to use this forum software 
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