Yes, I know you can change the templates. In fact, the phpBB boards that have been customized by templates are actually quite nice (if those board templates were created by the webmaster himself rather than taken from a website, they might get a higher score from me ). However, I do take the default layout into consideration. Unfortunately, it is quite difficult to make the default layout look good, even with color customization. Trust me, I've seen boards that have been customized, and they still look pretty bad, IMO.