The focal is very unclear. It took me about 2 seconds to notice that the person was on the side. I was actually going to comment that the thing in the middle doesn't look well with a sword.
Which brings up my second point. The thing in the middle seems to be the main focus of the sig. Everything is 'flowing' from it.
I am working on getting access to the old news portal under a different URL for those that would rather use that for news before we get a different news view.
It is OK though for the main page to open up on the forum in the view it was before. As long as the portal has its own URL so it can be viewed that way I do want to try it as a regular forum view for a while
I switched it to a "Standard" article forum. This will show the thread list like normal, but the threads themselves will have the first post set up above the rest of the "comments"