While I appreciate your efforts and nighters, as you put it, I have seen transition of Bulletin software on arguably a much larger and busier website, AVForums.com handled in a much better manner. They moved from vBulletin to Xenforo platform, and I feel their new implementation is much better than Discourse implementation here. This is an argument, too little too late, as PakWheels Management had taken the reins of this important decision from people onto their own hands. This was a very big decision for arguably the busiest forums of Pakistan, and yet only a select few knew about it. Smells like a military coup.
I will share some posts from AVForums as a reference of how this change could have been possibly handled.
https://www.avforums.com/threads/new-design-for-avforums-commissioned.1281922/
Notice how the message comes from the top, ie Founder/Owner.
Note the time stamp: Jul 3, 2010 at 9:35 AM
This thread continues to share the progress, throwing ideas around and possibly gathering feedback on layout, colors etc.
Now, fast forward to another thread:
https://www.avforums.com/threads/changes-coming-to-avforums-soon.1778911/
This post is again from the Stuart Wright, owner/founder.
This post was to announce the changes imminent.
Note the time stamp of the post: May 26, 2013 at 5:20 PM
So he started a new thread 3 years later to announce of the imminent change.
And for good measure too.
Compare this to PakWheels. I heard about this change for the first time after it was implemented, and then heard that about 1.5 years worth of effort has been put behind this change. I agree and like most of the changes. However, I was like most surprised/shocked/dismayed (cross out as you wish) to find out a stranger "@fahadullah" proudly announcing the new changes on top of the front page. This to me was anarchy, clearly.
And for a good reason too. Who is the owner/founder/manager of this public forum? We have yet to hear his/her side of the story. And this change has been in place for a good 6 days.
(All in good faith).
Best.