The hardfork went well and Ellaism is still running on its original chain. Features are
- WASM (Web Assemly) support in addition to solidity for smart contracts
- Parity is the supporting full node at the moment
- Byzantium is enabling Ellaism to follow the cool Ethereum developments

Other cool stuff has happened as well:
- Mobile Wallets for android and IOS
- TipBot on discord server
- Kastle.pro likely to list Ella on their Exchange, when they go live (Ella won a voting there)
- Community Fund is growing visible in explorer.elaisim.org 0x01ff0FFd25B64dE2217744fd7d4dc4aA3cAbceE7

About to come:
- More Wallets and Ledger Nano S support
- a different network explorer
- pool.ellaism.eu mining to community fund (similar to pool.ellaism.org is mining to developer fund (1% mining fee goes 100% to fund)
and I likely missed topics 

I assume you want to run a full node. Using parity i have a full node using 4gb for the blockchain database. I had a full node based on geth on a 20gb virtual private server and had to stop it due to lack of space.
Also it will support wasm (Web Assembly...) and other improvements. AFAIK Parity currently is the better choice to be compatible with the upcoming features (https://ellaism.org/news-update/).
Useful information for getting started with Ellaism node based on Parity can be found here: https://wiki.ellaism.org/clients/parity

The official ellaism.json can be found on github:
https://github.com/ellaism/parity-config/blob/master/ellaism.json

If you still don't get connections to more nodes you might want to remove the file "nodes.json" from your parity installation folder, somewhere in (this is from a Parity on Ubuntu Linux, it should be similar in Windows, though):
.../io.parity.ethereum/chains/ellaism/network/nodes.json

I hope this helps.

I am Mining Ella and Network Difficulty: 2.672 T at the Moment.

It is mainly important for blockchains that split into 2 chains and therefore share an identical part in the beginning. It shall address the issue that a transaction for one chain can be valid for the other chain. Example Bitcoin Cash put a lot of effort into replay protecton before forking from Bitcoin. I like learning from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbqafDBP8ls

You get your private key from https://ellaism.github.io/ellawallet/ which allows you to Access your Ella Balance using current and upcoming wallets. There is no private keys stored on the ellawallet Website. Make sure you have a copy of the private key in a safe place. I am running the Wndows wallet as well without serious issues so far. You remind me of figuring out how to make a paperwallet using the Mist based Ellagem wallet.

I think it has already a lot of the Ella core:
- based on Ether Code causes the outline
- Female touch explains the rounded "E"

I just started solo mining using the parity node and ethermine. 4.2 MHs might take a wile to find a block... I can't wait seeing it happen ;-) Thx for sharing this opportunity getting the feel of being an early adaptor.