Hi Willy!

In the past I decided to use MLF because of it's simplicity.

Me too

And because both user groups could be pleased: Board View AND Thread View lovers .

Hhm, but quoting Alex (What it is not?)...

But now we are loosing Users. I asked them why they leave.
For sure there are some Users which changed their topic and are not further
interested in our Forum at general. But most of them answered me,
that our Forum Software was missing some basic features.

IMHO if - any - forum's topic is interesting, the styles - and underlying techniques - should not count that much. If it's just another 'me too' forum, fancy appearances become the main thing...

The Board Overview was one of the most named features.
Looking forward to 2.0 I expect to loose all the users if there ist only the Thread view left.

Hhm again. Not a single user in my forum changed to the board view in the personal profile - but I must confess, the forum's topic is scientifically oriented - rendering the user not a representative sample...

They do not need Avatares an all the funny and colored features of the heavy Board scripts. But they are missing some basic functions which make it easier to read what is new.

Even in the 'old' version it was/is possible to change the order of posts (forum.php line 41):

  if (empty($order)) $order="last_answer";

instead of

  if (empty($order)) $order="time";

MLF had some larger installations in the last years.
Most of them changed their Software inbetween just because of missing basic Featuress.

There are many free boards around, but only a little 'little forums'...

just my 2 ct.

Mine's too.