I'm not sure if those changes were all intentional: we haven't updated the forum software, the downtime was due of having moved the whole FSDT site on a new server with a new hosting company.
You might remember that this summer we had the whole site down for a week, running on a backup site without forum, because our former hosting service had the whole support staff in vacation and there was no way to contact them either. Although the service was eventually restored, we weren't happy of that lack of service we received from that hosting company, so we now moved to a different server with a different company.
The new server has a newer operating system with updated support software releases so, it's possible those changes you see are a result of those updates. It's likely a bit faster too, because we have an higher bandwidth allowance now.
