Interesting at my end ... I was delighted to see the email from chocholo, clicked on my old bookmark and found myself at the https addy, already logged in.
The only minor problem apparently was with some cookies ... as others have noted, I found that all postings in all forums were considered "new", plus I had to reset my local time. So I left (without logging out), deleted all avast cookies (without touching permissions), came back in and made appropriate changes including "mark all as read", and things seem to be fine now.
Part of the minor problems may have been due to the upgrade to Firefox 30 ... I found that "site preferences" for some other places, such as Amazon, have also gone astray and need restored.
Many thanks, chocolo (and probably Vlk and others, too), it's good to be back.