I've been participating in I'net discussion sites for about 20 years, some that look like DU's or FR's (I assume, I've not gone there this century), and some similar to CC or vBulletin or phpBB, or etc.. I loath that dinosaurian DU-FR-style user interface. And the hacker hoards "out there" have, collectively, vastly more talent and creativity than one or three spare-time basement code-spinners at DU or FR!
FR and older sites like it started back in the RYO days, and have a significant investment therein. I get that. But for the sake of usability and looking modern, they really should have transitioned to something more modern 15 or more years ago. Turning the old forum into an archive and starting up the new forum, with a transition time when new threads could not be started on the old forum but "live" threads could be talked out isn't totally painless, but for usability, security, and not looking dinosaurian, it's what they should have done.