New look; confusion on "new post" and forum topics

I was just trying to open up a couple of forums, see which one was the better place to post something, and then post it as a new topic.

I like the pictures when browsing, but if I know roughly where I want to go to post a new post, the new look doesn't help me as much.

I opened two main forum areas, the "homesteading," and "permaculture artisans," to see which one had more to do with a topic like making chocolate truffles, or holiday cooking generally.
At first I could not tell which window held which forum.
Finally found the forum headings over to the far right on my screen, but it might work better if there's a central header over all the photo-rich posts.

I also don't see the "new topic" button where I'm used to looking for it, on this page, when I have loaded a big over-arching forum like "Homesteading."
It's usually in the top-right once I'm in a thread. But I don't see it from the main forum level.
I can also see the "new topic" button from a sub-forum like Fukuoka or Cooking, but not from the main forum level.

Maybe that's intentional. If we don't want posts in the main topic "homesteading" but want to force some sorting, it would kinda make sense.

This is the first time I've found the new look actively frustrating as I tried to do something, so thought I'd capture the moment.
Might have just been midnight blundering.

I did get the "Quick! Chocolate!!!" post up there, eventually.
https://permies.com/t/53662/cooking/Quick-Chocolate#439385

Yours,
Erica

It is possible that the solution to this might be more categories. We might need one for fiddling with foodie bits.

heya... it looks to me that "homesteading" and "permaculture artisans" are not actual FORUMs. But categories in which the actual forums are sorted.

so the category "homesteading" contains a forum "homestead" ...

maybe it would make sense to have in all categories (on top of list) forums for "unrelated, general, totally mixed STUFF that won´t fit into any special forum"

There is a button that says all forums

paul wheaton wrote:There is a button that says all forums

I'm really glad this is there! Perhaps having the link up at the top of the screen, too, would help. This would be most useful on the "Forum" homepage, somewhere in the vicinity of "Top Forums" so that people new to the site can find it easily. It's not intuitive to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the "Top Forums" to find a link to "All Forums." I attached a an example of how it could be changed, with the "All Forums" brass button above the "Top Forums" link. If I were new to the forum, I'd see "Top Forums" and assume those were all the forums here. Which isn't terribly useful.

Another thing that would probably help people locate where to post would be reverting the "All Forums" page to the old forum list format. The old format had the major advantage of telling you what should go in each category, such as telling us that "hugelculture" includes raised beds, and what areas "The Rockies" and "Cascadia" encompassed. Our new formate does not give that information anywhere that I can locate, and I find that info really helpful for trying to decide if something should go in "cooking" or somewhere else. Perhaps the "All Forums" button could link to the old forum view? It's a loooooong page, but at least it makes sense. Also, the page could be tightened up a lot if there was the option to minimize/maximize subforums (I don't know if I'm using the right term here, but by maximizing I mean the little "+" sign next to a forum group that reveals all the subforums, and the minimizing is the "-" that hides them all again).

If you really hate the old format, you could also add the the "hover your mouse over the category name to reveal extra details about it," but most Newbies won't know about the hover option and will remained lost. It's probably also hard to "hover" when using a mobile device (I don't have one), and I gather a lot of people are using mobile devices these days...