Everyone: We needed to move to a more secure forum, it is that simple. Because of the licensing costs of Invision Power Board (and our out-of-date license), there has been investigation for some time about alternatives.
PHPBB is simply not secure. Period. It's free, has a decent templating engine, but that is all it has going for it.
vBulletin looks terrible, and seems slow.
Simple Machines is very speedy (has anyone else noticed the responsiveness of the website), the main URL's are clean (and bot safe) and the templating engine is VERY COOL.
Give it some time while cmonkey and others work on getting a nice spongebob theme up. For now, stop wining, this IS the forum software we're using. Try to get used to it, and expect a new skin soon.
(And stop complaining about the dam smilies! =)