Massive thanks for all of the input folks!
We agree, the forums are a bit of a mess at the moment.
The team and I are reading every response carefully and we’re getting some great insights. Stay tuned, because we’re going to be sharing the major learnings and what we’re going to be doing with them very soon 
This, exactly why we said this new forum sucks when it came out. Total mess. While I understand Envato’s need to consolidate the marketplaces in one forum, it simply doesn’t work. I hope you guys listen and solve this problem.
It ruined the whole purpose of forums
I don’t really agree with people wishing the old forums back…
I think discourse (the software behind the new forums) is a huge step ahead comparing it to the old forums and simply is a beautiful piece of software. It feels live, light like a breeze, super-fast, has tons of features (that are actually usefull, you just have to find them and adapt to using them) and is beautifully designed from my point of view.
The only problem that Envato made when switching to the new forums was mentioned many times (here and in other threads): Envato lives in denial about the marketplaces and its authors. They simply want to live in the happy illusion that the marketplaces are basically just one big community, where interests overlap for the vast majority of topics.
That’s simply not true.
Audiojungle authors aren’t too interested in topics related to wordpress and coding and videohive authors aren’t really too interested in all those posts from Audiojungle authors complaining about rejections. (Just some random examples, as always there are exceptions).
(BTW: Envato actually made the same mistake when they made the switch to the new search engine, thinking all marketplaces basically work in the same way regarding search. Which of course isn’t true at all. This lead to the ever growing crisis regarding the titles on Audiojungle… but that’s another topic.)
Also I don’t understand why the category overview has to be the first page you see when you open the forums…
That’s what people loved about the old forums: Clicking on the main link to the old forums meant to directly see the latest posts from authors you know on topics you care about (because they are related to your main marketplace).
So the solution could be simple: The first page of the forums should be (like in the old forums) a “Latest Posts” page - that is filtered for each marketplace. To make the necessary changes even more simple you could use the existing tags for these filters. You could even let people choose which filters they want for their forum’s home-screen.
You could then add a new link in the main menu that shows ALL latest posts from ALL marketplaces (for people who want this). And just keep the existing link to the “Categories” page, but make it less prominent.
Apply these changes and you’ll see authors coming back to the forums. And they’re gonna learn to love the new forum software and its many, rich, beautiful features.
One more thing…
Get rid of the ‘Project Making’ category. This simply isn’t working like I guess you wanted it to work.
It’s just one main hierarchy too many that’s making the forums more complex where they should be more simple. It’s dividing the forums at exactly the wrong place.
If you want a dedicated place for authors and customers to come together and talk about custom jobs and collaboration, all you need is two simple categories (that could be called something like ‘customer wishes’ and ‘author collaboration’) on one level with the other categories.
And one last thought…
The first page of the forums should be (like in the old forums) a “Latest Posts” page - that is filtered for each marketplace. To make the necessary changes even more simple you could use the existing tags for these filters. You could even let people choose which filters they want for their forum’s home-screen.
To make a filter like this work you would of course have to force people to use at least one tag when they’re writing a post. That’s actually a change you could do right now without thinking twice…
Posts without tags are a really annoying thing right now since tags are the only possible way to see in one glimpse to which main marketplace/topic a post is related.
It’s annoying for authors that you would have to read the whole title to decide if that post could be relevant to you. That’s where authors give up when reading the forums…
I loved the old forum like it’s shown from “cyzer” above.
I miss the integration with the same headline after switching to the forum. And I miss the easy way to come to an authors profile page just by clicking on his avatar.
Just turn it back and everything will be fine.
Great decision 
We are excited to see what will be happen to envato forums 
The old one very clear and useful
Done! Hope it will be better!
Done,
Interesting to see results))
100%, agree!
forum is not usable for me
Show us what you can do
Every time you you change anything here, will only get worse. I can not and will not understand what is happening here!?..Why this nonsense is needed???
Personally, I reckon we can improve a few things 
Guys!
Please kill these 2 main categories!
I really use the email notifications, and receiving alert with “[Envato Announcements] Importan…” was way more useful than “[Authoring on Envato][Envato Announc…” >_<
I miss the badges and the signatures for elites were kinda cool. Would be nice if the forum wouldn’t autosync the 80 pixel avatars, very annoying if you ask me. I also would really like to order my badges on the forum. And oh yeah, a cup of tea would be nice, thank you.
I agree that the new forum has lots of cool things, but it’s also feels quite unpersonal.
I agree it’s annoying, but I found a solution that works for me (well, yes, my avatar here looks exactly the same as my avatar on the market, but they’re not the same image. I use a higher resolution version for the forums, it looks sharp and clean ). Create a Gravatar account with the same email address you use with your Envato account, upload to Gravatar whatever avatar you wish to have on the forums, then go to your Profile Picture setting on your preferences on the forums, and choose Gravatar based on your email.