Basically, what happened with the continuity, or rather 'canon', is that about a year ago Disney/Lucasfilm decided that the only 'canon' was the following:
-The six films and upcoming films.
-The CGI Clone Wars series
-The CGI Rebels series
-Marvel's ongoing "Star Wars" "Darth Vader" and "Kanan" comics, as well as the miniseries "Princess Leia" "Lando" "Shattered Empire" etc..
-The novels from "A New Dawn" onward, but nothing before that.
The existing EU is still available, but is being reprinted as "Legends" to distinquish it from the canon. Also the video games continuity is a bit unclear, Old Republic is still running and a new Battlefront game is coming out, but features some weird things such as Jedi Luke on Hoth fighting Vader.
So all the stuff about Grand Admiral Thrawn, Palleon, Yuzzhan Vong, Han and Leia getting married, Jacen, Jaina and Anakin Solo is pretty much no longer part of the canon story.
However certain elements of the older EU, such as those integrated into "Clone Wars" are still around in the new continuity, notably Quinlan Vos and Asajj Ventress. They even have a novel that deals with them. Also certain elements can make their way into the new continuity, such as the new Republic.
In this new continuity however, it doesn't look like the New Republic will last as long as it did in the novels, and perhaps is forced to scale back and become the resistance. There's some indication that this has something to do with Jakku, the desert planet with Imperial and rebel debris seen in many of the previews (Which is confirmed as not being Tatooine).