Hey! I own a money making forum, and I run SMF forum on it. Can anyone give me some ideas to look it more like a money making forum? And general feed back on the design on it? Some changes are made on the design. Please provide helpful feedback to me, so I can get the forum as good as possible Here is a link: Money tip forum
What about using related images for each forum/category as the status icon... like on http://www.captly.com/ -- I did never come around to develop and promote the site, but you should get the idea.
Should you ever decide to switch to vBulletin and vbSEO to run that board, I could provide you with the plug-in code to implement that feature with just some clicks... I haven't given SMF much attention since I don't think it's any good for SEO--- way too hard to optimize....
I agree that pictures could help to improve your forum, that visitors could easier get the idea about what is your forum. I think that this style is not the best one for money making theme, for me it seems very light, even too light, maybe change of style also could help. Also if you could move the home button more to the left side, I think it would be more convenient for visitors to get on the home page, simply that where I always search for the home button, I think that I am not the only one who does that!
It really is -- I've been using it on different sites for many years now, and together with vbSEO (http://www.vbseo.com/) you get the ultimate package for running a forum.