"'<p>bob.paluch [[#question-1290841|said]]</p>'' <blockquote> First, I would like to know why the old phpBB style forums are gone? </blockquote> What is a phpbb style forum? Are you talking about mozillazine, an independent organization that has folded up and no longer exists or are you talking about something else? I am guess mozillazine because you don't mention anything about what web site your referring to. If it is mozillazine, this is all I know https://web.archive.org/web/20200209214042/http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3055133 <blockquote> This new forum system is extremely un-user-friendly and it's taken me over half an hour to find a way to post a new message. Why the difficulty? </blockquote> There is nothing new about this forum, it has been the official support site for Thunderbird since some time in 2012 when the official support site moved from the services of getsatisfaction. I know this because it was what brought my profile to this site. <blockquote> Is Mozilla trying to discourage people from getting help? </blockquote> That is something you would have to ask them, but the process of leading folks through an asking of the question and display of possible solutions was originally about getting folks to understand that they should make some effort to inform themselves before that asked for someone to explain it to them personally. You might also wish to consider that Mozilla are not invoilvfed in bringing you Thunderbird. It is a separate project from Mozilla. Although the foundation does offer a legal home to the project. <blockquote> Second, my question is about upgrading. I despise upgrading. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". </blockquote> Unfortunately as the pace with which vulnerabilities are found, a security and stability release occurs every four weeks. So while you might not see an issue, there is one, so it is broke. <blockquote> Every time I upgrade something, I end up with time consuming problems. </blockquote> and I would guess that will be about the worst update you have ever had to the next Thunderbird version. None of your current addons will work without update. A large part of that is you have chosen to do a big bang update after years so you get everything but the kitchen sink changed in one go. Every minor inconvenience3 adds to each other over year and you get them all at once. Thus reinforcing your view updates hurt. <blockquote> I am currently using Thunderbird 17.0.6 and was considering upgrading because it's hard to find extensions for the old version. </blockquote> Also about the time we moved to this forum. <blockquote> My concern is that if I upgrade, I'm worried about losing emails and settings. </blockquote> Given very few people loose their profile in a irrecoverable way I think this is not a real concern. <blockquote> This problem ALWAYS happens to me, which is why I avoid upgrading. </blockquote> Upgrade and we will help you reattach yourself to your profile if it gets lost. But not upgrading for long periods vastly increases the risk an upgrade incurs. The best approach is make a backup of your profile before you upgrade. <blockquote> Is there a way to install both versions of Thunderbird on the same laptop? </blockquote> No recent versions modify the profile as a part of the upgrade so downgrade protections are in place. Rather than allowing downgrade they are actively prevented. <blockquote> If not, how can I make sure I can uninstall the new version and restore the old version undamaged if something goes wrong? </blockquote> As I said earlier backup your profile before you start.

The answer in almost everything of this type is backups, backups. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-thunderbird-stores-user-data#w_backing-up-a-profile Regarding phpBB, are we supposed to guess about what you are talking about? Please provide a URL.