At least now my eyes don't hurt. Glad to see you decided to change your mind and listen to what virtually every member was saying rather than saying "But it's like Google, you're all wrong". Imagine if they printed a novel in the format of a magazine or vice versa. Each format works well, and people can read both for hours, but use the wrong one for the wrong application and people are going to select a different magazine/novel. It's the same with different types of web pages, and Google gets away with it because you don't stare at a Google screen for more than 30 seconds to a minute, even if you're doing hours of googling. The format you have here might be good for some applications, but it's not good for a discussion forum - I think that's the point you were missing when you set the current scheme up.
The colour change has partially fixed the problem of the 'cluttered' look of the new site. With all the boxes having the same colour scheme nothing stood out. If you are going to clutter the page up with a million different boxes at least make them clearly differentiated from one another and clearly label them. Even with a good colour scheme the clutter only works well for members who want to put the time into learning all about the site's system, while people like myself who just want to come in, click on "new posts" and maybe add a new thread or two once in a while just try to ignore it and find it gets in the way.
A really obvious solution would be to provide alternative skins for APS with different colour schemes and a 'basic' version which just shows the forum areas (snakes, lizards, for sale, etc - I stopped keeping track of the categories some years ago now so don't know what they are, but if they were consistent I would).
If APS is your life, sure, having it cluttered and complicated might be a good idea, but for most people it's easiest to keep it simple and user friendly. Making it quick and easy to use means people will use it rather than running off to your competitors. It makes even less sense to bother putting the time into learning the new system when APS's track record suggests it won't last long anyway. Remember that people don't like change, so changes should only be made if they are needed. This just looks like a case of reinventing the wheel in the hope it might be slightly better. If it's not going to be dramatically better, leave it as it is. If it's going to be worse, for Pete's sake, don't touch it. Given that designing a site is difficult to do, when you try something new it's going to be crap and need a lot of tweaking. Once you have something which works, stick to it.
Even if you want to ignore most of the above, you clearly should fix the differentiation issue (everything looks the same, so you don't know what's what - is it a post? Is it a signature? Is it a box showing the most recent posts of some randomly-chosen part of the forum which I am trying to block out, but can't, because it looks the same as the bits I actually am interested in?). This problem also makes the site look unfinished and unprofessional, and the current theme looks 'weak' - faded, small, fine print.
An obvious requirement (easily added) is a "new posts" option accessible directly from the home page.