Looks like some great new additions coming to the site (or here already)! I love the idea of a library of articles building here. HA! I just noticed that my post auto-saved as I was typing too... I wonder how many posts I've lost accidentally over the years? Nice touch!
I have run into a couple small bugs (viewing on Chrome 26.0.1410.65 on Mac OSX. I apologize if any of these have been brought up - I skimmed the thread, but 26 pages is a lot! Hopefully these aren't redundant:
The "remember me" option is not available for me to click. I assume the checkbox is to the left of the text, but the text is cut off at the front end by the banner. I can see part of the "R," but it mostly reads "emember me." As a result, I have to re-login each time I come to the site.
The second bug is with the search box in the nav bar. Entering a search term sometimes just brings me to a search form where I have to re-enter the query and a captcha.
One question that's not a bug: My first click when visiting the old forum was usually the top left navbar link for "User CP." This brought me straight to a list of threads I was actively involved in or had subscribed to, with the most recent additions at the top. New PMs, if any, were also displayed above those threads. This was a great user-centric page to be able to access - I could sort of check in on everything I had a running interest in quickly, and then browse the site if I wanted to explore a bit. I can't find an equivalent page on this new forum. Does it exist? If not, could it?
And lastly, one suggestion which likely has come up already, but I thought I'd add my voice/vote: The home page has become odd. There's so much content on the front home page now, and not a lot of heirarchy given to those elements. There's a top banner with a big image and text, then a carousel with a big image and text, and then ads with big images and text. Each is somewhat similar in image and text size. I don't really know where to look, and the navigation on this page is heavily outgunned.
I've come to the site several times now, and I still kind of go back and forth between the two menus (nav bar and forum list) separated by the carousel, somewhat tentative about where I'm heading. I know the site well enough to find my target, but I imagine it must be quite confusing for a new user. Down below, the subnav (items in the dropdown above) are larger, bolder, and have more contrast than their bucket headers - that hierarchy becomes confusing; the bucket names are almost disregarded. So I don't associate "PROPS" (nav bar) with "Props" (forum header). I kind of assume "Replica Movie Props" is like the "PROPS" in the Navbar... And next in the nav bar I see "COSTUMES," and my eye catches "Wardrobe" down below, which seems close - but then I notice it's at the end of "Screen Used Movie Props and..." and so begins the confusion and the back and forth comparison.
The home page of the forum is critical from a UI standpoint. It should be inviting and provide clear, enticing portals into the content that your users are looking for or interested in. I'm all for monetizing the site, but no one's gonna mind if these ads are more evenly distributed throughout the forum experience. It'd be nice to see either the header minimized or the carousel removed so they don't fight with one another for attention or real estate. Most importantly, it'd be nice to see the nav get some love! Bump up those forum headers, make sure people can see those buckets right away and match them to the main nav at a glance! This is the hub of the RPF, and it'd be a shame to have users create their RPF bookmarks for a secondary page because the main one isn't very useful.
I recognize that this site is a HUGE undertaking! I hope this post is all received as constructive feedback - that's certainly how it's intended. The new forum software is clearly much more powerful, and the new features are going to make this a much better site and source of information for our hobby. This has been a long time coming - congratulations on finally rolling it out, Art!
