That was a bit of a shock! Here are my thoughts...

For the forum section (which I guess is going to be the main body of the site)- I dislike the style of presentation, and the overall feel of it. I like few and simple lists with little to distract my attention or attack my vision.

Having stuff that is hardly important, like Statistics, Users Online, Last Online, Newest Members, Team members, Top Posters, and Top Forums on either side I find very frustrating. I'm sure many people here (especially older members, or people with poor eyesight) would agree heartily.

The simplicity of the Network54 forum is one reason I love this place.

I suggest you remove things like Top Posters, Top Forums, and Last Online, (it's a programming forum, after all, and very few people will care about who posts the most or who was the last person online) and move everything except the menus, and maybe forum list, down to the bottom. Thus the News could expand out to the right.

Also, other visual things:
Make most of the fonts larger. (You'll have a bit more space to do so if you perform the above suggestions) Although I don't find them hard to read, some people will, and small fonts also means there are more letters in your centre of vision, adding to this visual distraction effect.

Make the borders a bit thicker and further apart. This will also help reduce the visual distraction.

If possible, change the main background to grey, or the backgrounds of the small boxes (menu, news items, etc.) to grey, so it is easier to tell different sections apart. That is, so boxes like "Menu" will have their contents a different colour to the surrounding area, rather than just a border. Otherwise you have to follow the borders to find where the corners are, which is quite straining. Also it will make it look more like QB dialog boxes. (If you do this then you don't need to keep the borders.)

Fixed-width fonts would also help bring out the QB. Maybe Fixedsys and Courier. Not everywhere, but maybe titles and stuff.

Consider making the "Register" etc. buttons up the top into text between two green triangles, like in QB help.

Hopefully you'll see things from my point of view and come to some sort of compromise. I know the work, enthusiasm, and goodwill you're putting into this and it'd be a shame if I did not visit the site much because it strained my eyes.