The old forum on here changed to a pay only version (which was pretty expensive) - the version that has been running here had a security issue discovered in it.  So, the decision was made to switch to a newer, supported forum plugin.  It has similar features as the old forum, and hopefully it is a little easier to use.  It has some new features as well (like the ability to create polls)

All of the messages from the old forum have been converted to the new forum so no information was lost.