I did a lot of work on layout, showing useful data in the forum cards and changing the layout so that types of data will be in the expected position so your eyes aren't darting all over the place.
I also updated the general layout, nudging forums to the left to make space for recent posts on the right. While there is a recent updates box on the main page, there needs to be a sense of activity on the forum page, so i feel this kind of bulletin feed is really effective at giving an at-a-glance idea of what's new, with a decent preview.

next step will be moving the new topic button from the top of the forum page, into the header of each open forum, and having the new topic form open within the forum container.

after that, I feel it's important to add a post edit feature and also a way to control image sizes in posts.