Forums Redesign Feedback

I'm trying to re-design the forums to make them more mobile friendly and not have them look so dated, but having trouble with it. I'm attaching a screenshot of what they look like currently on the dev environment. Thoughts?

Would be nice if we could have more contrast between different forums, it's all a little too much like a whitish bluish wall in the screenshot.

Also how will unread messages be indicated? Will we lose the ability to see if only a particular subforum is unread as opposed to the whole forum? Because that is quite helpful.

Also not a fan of those dots, the current little text box thingies are good (I have no idea what to call them)

Thanks @canopy. In the screenshot, the blue dot means there are new posts, and bolded subforums means there are new posts in there, but that's useful info to know that's not immediately clear.

agree with can here, the current hierarchy is good. - also, can you add back the button to create a full reply under the quick reply?

I'd like to see some kind of divider between Announcements and Pinned threads like there was in the old forum design.

For forums with a lot of pinned messages, that was a way to help divide them up a bit so it wasn't so cluttered. Some forums I know used the 'Announcements' part for important locked threads like rules or guides and pinned threads for threads that people could discuss and reply on. Right now they're all grouped together which makes it a bit difficult to sparse through. I can share a visual example through PM

@Omni ->> Announcements should now be marked with a megaphone.

@serrodyne ->> There's always the Post a reply button in the toolbar, but I have added back the 'Full Reply' button to the quick reply form.

I'm having the same issue as Omni for quickly navigating between pinned and announcement threads in forums where we relied on having a bunch of pinned and announcement forums. I also wish they were divided again! (definitely not the end of the world, just an aesthetic / navigation preference!)

But if not divided, could we possibly have the little avatar icon of the poster on the far right for pinned + announcement forums just like the regular ones to give us an additional visual cue at a quick glance what's what without needing to read the whole title.