The design is much more modern (the old one was kind of 1996ish). At first sight, it looks like the frontpage design could still be made just a little bit less cluttered, though.

The content on the page is much better than on the old page to induce traffic to the forums, and it is good to put a pointer for new members on the page.

The "Recent Posts" thing is good, because actual topics will induce people to check out the forums much more than just a word like "TravelBuzz" or "Miles and Points forum" which will not tell a newbie much.

Even though perhaps design/usability wise, it might not be the ultimate/perfect solution yet, it is a good thing that it was attempted to fit everything in one page so that you will not have to scroll on a regular 1024 x 768 screen.

It is key that all pages have the same header so that there is a consistent navigation to fall back on. I would actually have considered/attempted to put one and the same header above the editorial content of Flyertalk as well as the chat and the forums, to more create the "one Flyertalk" impression. I bet a lot of people (like myself) almost never paid attention to the main Flyertalk page and just went straight to the forums.

Ideally, after a member registers, the "My Flyertalk" would somehow be integrated with the start page or elements of it - so that the large number of members who still goes straight to the forums gets more of an incentive to participate in polls, shop, etc., and go to the other areas of Flyertalk...like the chat, the photo gallery, etc. - as it is right now, the forums and the rest of Flyertalk have not yet reached the maximum amount of possible integration yet.

In any case, it is a vast improvement (huge) over the old version - I know what a huge effort it is to have a whole website redesigned and implement a new navigation structure - congratulations!!! .