Personally, I think the Medieval skin is the best. I suppose it is because I am really into roleplaying but it just "fits" me also.
At the very bottom of the Plain Skin I have added the extra links that are normally associated with the other Skins such as the Forum Shop and Arcade, but more importantly Donations and Comparison Page as we still want to offer Upgrading Membership as an option.
I just got an idea, I do not know what you all think, so please feel free to share your views. I was thinking it would be cool to have certain skins for certain special dates of the year. During these special days, everybody would see the same skin. For instance, it would be cool for Halloween to have a "scary" type of skin just for that day or for Christmas to have a more "spiritual type", during that day only we will all see the same skin. Now, because I know the admin will says is a LOT of work, this could be done only on few dates during the year.
I think it will be cool to have that feeling of "surprise" everytime you enter the forum.
I have thought about this before, but the following caused me to NOT implement it:
1. People get lost easy (many who come here are not net savvy), they already find the Community so hard to navigate, and if I were to change it to something they are unfamiliar with then they would not Post at all.
2. Themes usually cause more download time and our Dial-Up users will become bogged down by the length of time they need to wait just to see a page.
3. If users want the 'feeling of the season' then they can always change the Skin themselves or use the Theme Banners which caters for most seasons.
I have been here for a long while now, and if I change my skin, I still have to figure out where some of the little things are again. While I think the idea in principle is rather novel, I think it would cause more problems than its worth.
However, a pop up screaming screen would be funny on the random occasion!