OK, we'll change everything back just for you to be able to make things bold easier, even though phpBB sucked much more and caused regular problems. 
If you give some specific examples we might be able to help.
[code] still works, although there are better alternatives that let you specify language for syntax highlighting/coloring. You can also do inline code blocks which phpBB did not have, and which are very useful.
Lots of examples of code blocks and making things bold, including several edge cases, are here in case you missed the link above the post editor or forgot about it:
Not sure what you mean. What do you want an exact count of? Number of posts in a thread? Number of posts you've made? Something else?
How will having the exact count improve the forum for asking & answering tech support questions?
There is a mod we could install for that, but it did not seem worth it. Each mod is another thing that can break. Colors were used very rarely in the old forum, and usually for things that inline code blocks or other formatting would work better for now, or for syntax coloring which is now automatic. Colors also conflict with people who wish to override the forum's normal theme (using CSS currently, but the Discourse roadmap has the ability for users to choose their own theme planned for a near-future version) since posts with random colors in them may not be visible on a different background.