The original post was more just a conversation opener rather than a full on specification.
But what I want essentially is the bare minimum, I don’t want all the same functionality etc as the other site, just how it looks and feels, so eg forum categories in seperate boxes that are styled the same way as on the site i showed, colour wise id prefer something that matched the default discourse light theme if im honest as again colours, etc is all stuff ive got the ability to change and play with myself, its the core ‘look’ of the theme id struggle with myself which is the layout elements compared to vanilla discourse