Yes, I found the latest post quotes to be rather distracting. There is no context for the posts (not even thread name), so it's all wasted space for me. Maybe it would be more useful to show something like recently commented threads and maybe a preview of latest posts in that thread if you hover. Some other issues for me:
* The usernames do not appear next to the avatars in the posts, and generally users are identified by avatar rather than username. This is very confusing, especially since avatars can change, and it's hard to distinguish faces in images that small.
* Along the same lines, icons are used all over the place instead of text. I find this annoying, as the icons are not self-explanatory, and I have to hover over every little icon in order to understand what I can do. For example, I had no idea what the "topics" and "posts" icons meant before hovering. Similarly, there is no reason to use text in the navigation bar (add an icon next to the text if you must). To be fair, the icons have the advantage of taking up less space on mobile.
* The styling was a bit jarring to me, with the high contrast and lack of strong borders between elements. The whole purpose of going to a forum is to read a lot of text, so it makes sense to use more neutral background colors. Of course, this can be customized I'm sure, so this is more feedback on the demo site rather than the platform.
But overall the implementation seemed solid, and I can see this eventually becoming a nice BB platform.
* The usernames do not appear next to the avatars in the posts, and generally users are identified by avatar rather than username. This is very confusing, especially since avatars can change, and it's hard to distinguish faces in images that small.
* Along the same lines, icons are used all over the place instead of text. I find this annoying, as the icons are not self-explanatory, and I have to hover over every little icon in order to understand what I can do. For example, I had no idea what the "topics" and "posts" icons meant before hovering. Similarly, there is no reason to use text in the navigation bar (add an icon next to the text if you must). To be fair, the icons have the advantage of taking up less space on mobile.
* The styling was a bit jarring to me, with the high contrast and lack of strong borders between elements. The whole purpose of going to a forum is to read a lot of text, so it makes sense to use more neutral background colors. Of course, this can be customized I'm sure, so this is more feedback on the demo site rather than the platform.
But overall the implementation seemed solid, and I can see this eventually becoming a nice BB platform.
Edit: this is all based on https://community.nodebb.org/.