Discourse 2.8, codenamed “Audion” after the invention of radio, has been released. Key updates include a new visual style for personal messages to distinguish them from public topics, clearer indication of last read positions in topics, and several security fixes. The release also features a new shortcut for creating hyperlinks in posts. The blog post thanks users, customers, and contributors, and encourages others to try Discourse, either by self-hosting or using a free 14-day trial. A discussion in the comments addresses quality-of-life improvements, including the display of topic counts per month, which is explained in a linked meta post here.
Today we release Discourse 2.8, building on Discourse 2.7 from May 2021. For post 2.0 releases we’ve chosen a new set of codenames based on the history of human communication; this release is Audion and represents the invention of radio 📻.
Another neat little thing that went out in this release, a quick shortcut for adding hyperlinks to a post. Here’s how:
https://example.comDoing this will turn the selected text into a link, → like so ← .. thanks @gwwar for this cool outside contribution! 
Thank you everyone that makes Discourse awesome! I remember having to make the hard decision of picking a forum software years ago and I’m confident that I made the right decision! I can’t wait to see what’s next!
3 posts were split to a new topic: Topic excerpts appearing after update to Discourse 2.8
A few QOL changes. It’s nice when I’m just browsing. Now, all we need is multiple topic drafts.
Is this part of the release or a setting the forum admins made?
The number of topics is per month and not per week.
This post explains when week, month or a total count are shown.
