Gone are the messy multiple nav links in favour of a simple sequence of breadcrumbs at the top.

So too are the icons for new/old/borrowed/blue posts as I found them unintuitive and so pointless - if users want to see new posts they will click 'new posts'. Not rocket science.

And gone are the sub board post counts. Users should be encouraged to post in the most relevant area regardless of perceived 'busy-ness'.

Also included is UK and US English language packs to address forum-to-board naming subtleties

There is another way - distilling the gradient from a scene in nature directly.  Gaussian blur with high radial value accomplishes this effect easily: 

A mixture of 100, 200 & 500 percentage points with the radius set at 30 pixels, some work better than others

 

Blues and greys look cool, so all the twilight/urban/ice stuff comes out well.  Some nice colour combos elsewhere too - river valleys, naturally 'fluorescent' colours both hitting the jackpot.  Need to look at how to combat the tendency to increase pixelation.