Those are additions by the geniuses here! (To me they are geniuses, because I'm not a programmer.)
But if you visit the
Customizing & Code Hacks Forum and the
Forum Design Integration Forum you'll see where all these neat "additions" or hacks can be downloaded and installed.
The customized front page thing is by JustDave. It's called
IndexPal and can be found in the Forum Design Integration forum. Your timing is perfect...Dave's just released an updated version.
As of a week or two ago, I'm running a pretty "hacked" version and my users LOVE it all!