A few additional notes..
The work weve done this far and the release version is a WIP state.. It's going to be great, but not yet perfect. We will rely on bug reports and community suggestions to improve on the new forums after they have released. As a note we changed the white navi-bar as requested- It fits better with the overall color scheme now.
(BIG THANKS to Lady Alec and Solus who have both been working incredibly hard on designing the website)
There will also be a lot of new features and I will try and compile a thread with all relevant information before we make the move, but its possible this will take a few days. A few notes is these new forums are more user-customizable and friendly, and much nicer / easier to use on mobile.
Another thing to note is some of our minor addons are not updated and will not transfer over. These are small addons such as @ing a group. All major addons are updated.
Everything will transfer over as is, there should be no loss of pictures/etc.
This is something we've been working on for months and will be a positive change. Change is a hard thing, not many, myself included, like change. But I hope those who are hesitant will come to enjoy the fresh new look.
Oh, and theres going to be emoji support.