I think the tabs at the top with all the 'my control panel' stuff and even the tabs below it with 'user cp' et al looks tacky. The old version is far easier on the eye, both in terms of how much it stands out, and also the professional aesthetics. Infact the whole of the header contains far too much blue. It just all blends into one lump, not good for ease of use in my opinion.
I don't particularly like the boxes under everyones avatars. They're overly eye-catching for information that isn't really important.
In terms of you wanting to make it easier to navigate the site, i'd say you only need two things: 1) a better laid out home page, with more distinguishing tabs for off-topic etc... and 2) a more refined search engine to find previous threads.
I don't mean to come out in negatives here, but the previous skin looks far nicer.