Whether or not it looks 'crunged' or not is something that myself and Darla took into consideration when we were deciding to go ahead with it. We both felt it wasn't and we liked the look of the new main page, so it was changed. When you have been going for as long as we have it is important to keep changing things to keep them fresh.
However, it is just exactly that, it is the main page, as you will no doubt see, when you click onto the forums themselves they are exactly as they were before.
There was already a thread in the news forum advising of the changes, there was no need to start a separate thread.