Migrated from XenForo to Discourse: Overview of the Migration

[Bas (Bas van Leeuwen)]

@SubStrider

Poor Content Discovery: Users miss the old categories page, which provided a clear, hierarchical overview of the forum’s structure and latest activity within sections. The new layout is seen as a “mishmash.”

For these users, you might want to consider explicitly calling out the categories overview. Or even consider switching that overview to something that they like better. It’s an opportunity to get them involved too.
Share some screenshots of what the different settings of Desktop category page style would look like and ask their favorite?

@SubStrider

Broken Quoting: The process of quoting text is described as difficult and flaky, especially on mobile and tablets where the quote pop-up can be obscured by the native UI.

This feels like feedback we’d like to get explicitly. Could you ask them to report this here on Meta?

@SubStrider

Excessive Whitespace: This was the most cited design flaw. Users on larger desktop monitors feel the narrow central column wastes significant screen real estate and reduces information density.

This is fixable with user themes Consider adding this theme component to a user selectable theme GitHub - discourse/discourse-full-width-component: Make Discourse occupy the full browser width · GitHub

@SubStrider

Poor Readability: The combination of whitespace, font sizes, and lack of clear separation between posts makes it harder to scan and read content compared to the previous software.

I don’t understand “clear separation of posts”?

@SubStrider

• Negative Sentiment / Usage Dropped: This is a critical metric. Multiple users explicitly state they visit the forum less often now.
• Positive Sentiment: A smaller but notable group enjoys the modern feel, speed, and features like the notification system and markdown editor.
• Adaptive Users: This group misses the old forum but understands the technical reasons for the migration and is willing to adapt.

Change is always hard, people will always complain. If the “negative” group is small enough, I think you could safely ignore them for now and focus on the adapters. Make their experience great and the negative people will fall in line (or leave).