Hi, and welcome back!
The code rewrite is a work in progress, because we are taking it in small steps to avoid breaking anything. That means certain features are disabled or hidden for now. So, for the time being, you can only see ratings in the archive listings.
As far as the urls in the stories themselves, you can post the url in your profile, and that might help readers find the thread. However, you would have to update those urls yourself, since they are text entries. We did have a redirect in place, but the old domain name has expired and therefore those redirects no longer function.
I believe Internet Explorer is playing nicely in the most recent version. At the very least, no one has been complaining to us about any new glitches caused by that browser, so I'm going to say that it;s straightforward now.