Gaia’s developers have just completed a six-month project to rewrite the code of Gaia’s forums. While most of the changes we made are ultra-important and ultra-boring infrastructure improvements that you probably won’t notice, there are a few things that look a little different:

• The Topic Listing screen has been changed. The icons showing you a topic’s status (i.e. unread, new posts, sticky, etc) have changed, and the subforum listing at the top of the screen looks a bit different. The topic list now has alternating shading to make things easier to read.
• The spacing is slightly different inside the topics, and the “subscribe” and “report” buttons have changed.
• The posting screen can do all the same stuff as before, but the layout is much more compact and intuitive. Things work better, too. For example, clicking a smiley will add it where your cursor is (not at the end of the thread text), and when you select a post style you’ll see a preview of what the style actually looks like.

Since this update involves a lot of new code, you may be seeing some glitches and oddities in the next few days. Our developers will be working hard to address these bugs as they pop up.