amen
I think the 'facelift' templates should continue in the way you've been doing them, as a cleanup of the basic code. Adding more and more features into the base code can tend to make a forum look pretty cluttered if they're all turned on. Developing a cleaner look would help that - if a link isn't active to that particular user, they should never see it. This emphasizes the content of a site and reduces the chinese phonebook look.
Now, if you're wanting to develop something new in a different direction, you might wanna visit lots of sites for visual inspiration - I do
The csszengarden site is a favorite, as well as various 'we sell templates' sites. Other leading design sites inspire me to move forum design in new directions as well. I hope our coming redesign of ubbdev shows that.
Back to square one... start here:
http://www.csszengarden.com/ - if I see something else that may be inspiring, I'll post them
