We have a Discouse forum setup with minimal design changes so far. We are looking for someone who can completely rework the design. We are looking for a more horizontal and traditional forum style. See the example below.
If someone is available to start very soon, we would like to see some examples of your work. It would be great to see some custom Discourse designs. We typically pay hourly, so if you want to post your portfolio or examples here or in a private message, we will take a look.
Hi, what is your budget for the job?
Hi AstonJ, a better question here is how many hours would it take? We are weighing our options between redesigning our discourse forum or switching to another platform. The players that make up most of the people visiting are rather young and donāt connect with the Discourse design.
Minor warning, always expect some very vocal complaints when transitioning platforms. This is a universal constant, nothing to do we demographics.
Cheese is moved, people are outraged. Even if in the past cheese was scattered all over the living room and after change it is neatly stacked in the cool room.
Hi Sam, yes I know. 
Internally, there has been a lot of discussions about the forum. We see Discourse is the best option for many people but we canāt force our players to use something that doesnāt connect with them. It seems no matter what direction we go, there will be some hard choices.
What do you think about this level of customization? Is it possible and practical? Most Discourse forums look similar beyond the small changes each company makes.
Discourse is plenty customizable, significantly more customizable than say phpbb or vbulletin cause we also allow you to amend page structure.
Butā¦ customizing Discourse is structure is more involved than customizing CSS. CSS is very easy, any designer can take care of it in the admin screens.
But to your original question
I want to keep Discourse but make it look exactly like vBulletin, can this be done?
Probably, but, what is the point, just move to vBulletin no reason to try to row this boat upstream.
I have similar challenges when a few of my users went into Discourse and felt overwhelmed. The problem is the landing page being the All Categories page with the description of the category on the left and only a list of 3 topics to the right.
Once I set the landing page to Latest, where it showed only a list of topics, everyone understands and accepts it.
Iām not surprised - you have it set up poorly.
Change your settings so ālatestā is the default home page (rather than the categories) and then add links to the Players and Developers categories in the nav. See how that goes for a few weeks before deciding to try another platform 
Going back to budget, when it comes to design you really do get what you pay for.
Thanks for the responses.
Probably, but, what is the point, just move to vBulletin no reason to try to row this boat upstream.
The problem with vbulletin is that it has gone stale. Say you want Oauth, you have to gut the auth system and add it. Then you cut off upstream support and have no upgrade path. Thatās my fear and itās one of many.
That said, there is value in coping the success of other systems. The traditional forum layout does have some advantages and familiarity with people. We are willing to attempt it, so weāre still looking for someone who can handle the task.
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