As I design websites as a hobby I noticed the horrible colors on the forums.

You need 3-4 colors max for the forums.

Heres some colors that might help, keep it simple and dont mix crazy colors together.

http://www.december.com/html/spec/color2.html

Look at other forums, try looking at some phpbb3 forum templates as a design reference.

http://www.phpbb3styles.net/

Hope this helps.