The test site's "darkish grey" comes out for me as a sickly dark greenish grey. How about making the new forum look and act as nearly as possible like the current one?
I do agree a longer list of recent posts would be nice... or as in the short-lived new forum where there were pages of the most recent posts in chrono order. I liked that, so as not to miss some.
Also, clustering the avatar and other member info together at left makes sense from a space utilization standpoint, and making it easier to read.