Sorry, I misunderstood the original question.
If I was starting a brand new message board right now, I would just go with vb3 Beta 6 and not worry about hacks until I had a core userbase of about 1000 people. For instance, a journal feature is worthless to a new board....people only want to keep a journal somewhere when they feel connected to the community.
In general, people are attracted to new boards that are friendly and address a good topic. Don't worry about technicalities and just get some good people posting first. We only started worrying about hacks when we had specific needs to handle all of our traffic. It is a good idea to only add hacks that serve a specific purpose.
Good luck, man!