The changes are still in the pipeline. Nothing was given up on. We won't be ready to switch over for a while yet.
Having the site down over the weekend for testing, error checking, etc is better than doing these things during the week.
Would be nice if perhaps there was more than a blank page indicating nothing could be loaded.. Perhaps a "We are sorry but the beaver dam broken and we are upgrading and fixing it"
This exactly. A whole weekend of downtime with zero notice is kinda harsh, especially since I'm sure us forum regulars are a tiny part of the site's traffic. A whole weekend of no access to a news site would shy me off pretty quickly.