Rise Image control

It looks like you're using the Gallery block. That does allow the user to click any  image to enlarge it and show the entire image. But, yeah, they are cropped to square in the initial appearance. So you'd have to prep them with that aspect ratio to have the entire image always visible. 

As for the Forum: Personally, I was glad they put all of the discussions into one place when they moved to the new site. There was never a consistent division between "Building Better Courses" and the "Products" area in the old site. Both kinds of questions (general eLearning and product-specific) could be found in both areas. 

The current Discussion area does have tags. Those appear near the top of the page, and you can filter the thread by choosing one of the tags. Not perfect, but it can be helpful.