Well it is nice you did all that work improving. Change, is good, and improvement via change shows groth so this is a good sign. In some ways, i agree it is better, in other ways...( I have a bias against the v-board style at times, one reason why i enjoyed visiting the old forum, because it seems every forum has the same template these days). This may be long, sorry, part of my degree was in webdesign and theory.
I am not to fond that when a user posts the name, avatar, user infomation is viewed above, in a horazontal format above each post. It would be more effecitve displayed on the left side of the post in a column format. The main page is a bit of a headache with all the lists upon lists of subforums, so much scrolling down. I believe the "live and frozen food" section can be condensed a bit, such as was done with the "sepcies" section. Sad it says I joined in may 2007 and have one post, but life goes on, in the end it really is not that important.
On a + note I like the colour scheme. In the actual subforums/forums, organization is done well, a limited number of threads are displayed and to view more one has to advance to another page. It is not fun to scroll for ages, so i find this an improvement. I am sure being a v board styles the search function has also greatly improved. Also, I like how this new style incorperates displaying the member who started a thread, it is a great resources especially if one recognized a user to have information constantly worth viewing or information not so great one would like to avoid. Also glad the user image is not constricted to 100x100 or smaller.
Hey, since people mentioned smillies/emotes, maybe someone can created custom salamander ones for the forum, i have seen some on Japanese sites. Just a thought for the future.
All, in all the + more than likely outweighs the -
Is there still donor status/donor area? I remeber you said there may be changes/subscriptions and whatnot to donor, well, i be waiting for the post about that when you are ready to announce.