About what happened

The reasons for the recent crash are pretty much unknown, unfortunately. What IS known is that the forum's database has "suddenly" shown up a "severe error", that was on Thursday, 12th Feb. In the course of trying to fix this, there have been more errors and the Admins decided to go for a clean start/fresh SMF (forum software) install. The old forum is set as read-only and can be found here for reference, but note that it's pretty screwed because of the database faults, so finding stuff may be difficult or even impossible. It's presumably going to stay online for about a month.

As you can see, some things here have changed:

• The News section got removed/replaced with that neat news bar
• "Forumgames and Competitions" underwent a slight change of rules (and name)
• "About Nicalis" replaces the former "Night Games and Nicalis related", mainly to get the whole topic organised better
• "Forum and Site Issues" changed its name
• We set up a new category called "Being Creative". We thought that it was worth it, because this community around Nifflas is a pretty creative one. This category has the forums:
• Creativity Support (basically equivalent to the former "Creativity-related Discussions")
• Development Showcase (hasn't really changed)
• Collaborations (cf. "Community Projects & Fan Games")
• Knytt Stories Level Editing Support (this is a bigger difference. Instead of being a board in a whole category "Knytt Stories" of its own, now the former "Level Editing" goes here.)
• Nifflas' Sources (wholly new, but relatively self-explanatory)
• The "Games in Development" currently only contains "Night Game", but starting with this Board you will see a neat little modification that LPChip implemented: The snazzy board icons, pictures made by Ponto.
• Also note that the small sidebar on the right of this image will change colour when new posts are made in that forum or the child's subforum.
• I am pretty sure that "Released Games" and "Abandoned Projects" with their respective Boards don't need any explanation.

And now to the biggest change: The KS-Level-Submission forums are gone. They are going to be replaced with a rewritten/extended version of knyttlevels.com, where you will be able to submit your levels to in the future and receive comments and ratings. User-made tilesets and custom objects will have their place over there too.
The reason for this is that the KS forums just were too many in relation to the rest of Nifflas' games. We decided to shift the balance back to having a Support Forum for all of them mostly equally. Because of this, you can't post levels on this forum anymore for discussion, you are going to have a place for that at the Level Archive soon enough. Also read LPChip's post on this matter.
Previews of levels can still be posted and discussed in here.

I hope this is the right place to respond because I wish to extend my congrats and thanks to all of those folks who put in a lot of hard work to rebuild the forum.

The forum looks great at first glance. Lots of changes and it appears to have  better organization.

The big difference is, as you said Paula, the removal of the KS level submission forums. Looking forward to a re-designed knyttlevels.com. I'm sure that will result in much reduced traffic here as I suspect most members are like myself in that they play levels but don't make them. I'm still fiddling with the level editor!   

It is very appreciated to receive at least some thanks for the forum's rebuild.
Thank you.

All I can say about it: yay!
I do really like the organizational changes. Congrats to LPChip, Paula, and the supermods for the new forum!

There are some things i find confuzzling about the new layout. For example, why cant Level editing and Level previews be child boards to the KS board? I think it would make more sense, but I'm just nitpicking.

Because the staff basically thought there were too much subsections to the knytt stories board and they'd keep the Nifflas-related stuff (the official levels and the editor support) there and the user-made content would then be moved to creativity -related discussions. I think it fits any of those, really, but we simply chose the "light" format.

Yay, the forum is back  .
But now i need to start all over and the DWYW data is gone  . nevermind.

...I like the new little icon dealies down the left side of the main page, but I miss having the little WaDF ball that shows whether there are new posts or not.

See the little bar to the right of the picture?  Same thing.

I personally wish there were a way to turn the icons off though; I'd like them if they were for every forum, but having them peppered with the tiny little WaDF balls just makes them disruptive.   

See the little bar to the right of the picture?  Same thing.

Yeah I know but I like the little WaDF balls better.

Oh.  You mentioned their ability to show the new posts which implied that you didn't see...aw, screw it.

We want an option!

Awesome. good work getting everything back up, it seemed to be pretty much a huge pain in the ass.

Layout changes seem to make sense, though I suppose nobody can be sure if they'll be successful until they are in use for a while.

Great to see the forum back up, good work remaking it so fast!

The bright light is blinding me. Are there any other available themes yet?

Yes. Click the button to go to your forum profile. From there, click "Look and Layout Preferences". In the "Current Theme" area, click "(change)" and select a new theme from there.

Currently, there's only one other theme, entitled "WaDF edition" (basically an enhanced version of Fasty's theme from the old forum).