I know what you mean about the HP thing, the users liked it and gave them a reason to start posting more, to get the "level" up which has worked nicely
I have now removed the bar displaying code as I think this is probably overkill but kept the "Level" thing going as users do take note of this and make posts (within our guidelines of course) to increase this which also leads to a more active looking site.
The header thing unfortunately will stay. I may reformat it in some way but not sure how as this does make me enough money to pay for the bandwidth and hosting each month, shoving it at the bottom will just not work for me as no-one will click the links if they dont see them, the top few forums are the most active so I want to make sure I get maximum exposure.
The style has more or less stayed the same as I like it. adding more graphics for borders etc will only increase my already high bandwidth so keeping it as much text and fill colours as possible is a good thing but does limit my design.
Not sure what bit your referring to in the postbit to get the siggy to sit on the bottom of the post? although, in the case of my own siggy it would cause a wrapping effect as it would overlap the report this post text on the right.