Has something changed in the Arch Installation?

Question

I've seem to run across a few things when I install Arch now.  I've installed Arch many times on the exact same computer with the exact same hardware but I'm experiencing some issues. I always use the FTP install. 
First, I have no colors anymore when I edit anything in nano (after the installation).  Why is that?  All i have is a completely fresh install, but no colors.  That never used to happen.  I haven't changed anything. 
Second, even though I select during the install which mirror i would like to keep as my 1st mirror, pacman -Syu will not work.  I have to go into into the mirrorlist file and uncomment a mirror.  Now that is not a problem at all, but why has that changed? 
On top of those things, I have problems now getting GDM to load my xfce4 session, and even without GDM, I can only load xfce4 thru the root login, not my own, and when I install ttf-ms-fonts, i get a error that says the package has different permissions than the /tmp directory, which has never happened before.  I think the GDM thing is also a permissions problem for some reason. 
But why oh why has Arch changed on me?!  Help!

Answer 1

Nano syntax highlighting is now stored in /usr/share/nano.
I added the following lines to /etc/nanorc:
## Arch PKGBUILD
include "/usr/share/nano/pkgbuild.nanorc"
## Syntax highlighting in xorg.conf
include "/usr/share/nano/xorg.nanorc"
## Generic conf/rc/sh file syntax highlighting
include "/usr/share/nano/conf.nanorc"
Here are the 3 Arch files I created:
cat /usr/share/nano/conf.nanorc
# Generic conf/rc/sh file syntax highlighting
syntax "conf/rc/sh" "conf$|rc$|sh$"
color white ".+"
color green "^#.*"
cat /usr/share/nano/pkgbuild.nanorc
## Arch PKGBUILD files
syntax "pkgbuild" "^.*PKGBUILD$"
color green start="^" end="$"
color cyan "^.*(pkgname|pkgver|pkgrel|pkgdesc|force|url|license|install|source|md5sums|groups|backup|depends|makedepends|conflicts|provides|replaces).*=.*$"
color brightcyan "\<(pkgname|pkgver|pkgrel|pkgdesc|force|url|license|install|source|md5sums|groups|backup|depends|makedepends|conflicts|provides|replaces)\>"
color cyan "\.install"
color brightwhite "=" "'" "\(" "\)" "\"" "#.*$" "\," "\{" "\}"
color brightcyan "(\$|\$\{|\$\()(pkgname|pkgver|pkgrel|pkgdesc|force|url|license|install|source|md5sums|groups|backup|depends|makedepends|conflicts|provides|replaces|startdir)(|\}|\))"
color brightred "build\(\)"
color brightred "\<(configure|make)\>"
color red "\<(DESTDIR|PREFIX|prefix|sysconfdir|datadir|libdir|includedir|mandir)\>"
cat /usr/share/nano/xorg.nanorc
## syntax highlighting in xorg.conf
syntax "xorg" "xorg\.conf$"
color brightwhite "(Section|EndSection|Sub[sS]ection|EndSub[sS]ection)"
# keywords
color yellow "[^A-Za-z0-9](Identifier|Screen|InputDevice|Option|RightOf|LeftOf|Driver|RgbPath|FontPath|ModulePath|Load|VendorName|ModelName|BoardName|BusID|Device|Monitor|DefaultDepth|View[pP]ort|Depth|Virtual|Modes|Mode|DefaultColorDepth|Modeline|\+vsync|\+hsync|HorizSync|VertRefresh)[^A-Za-z0-9]"
# numbers
color magenta "[0-9]"
# strings
color green ""(\\.|[^\"])*""
# comments
color white "#.*"