Hello new admin,
I have to admit that when I entered the site and saw the new front page image(the boat on the sea) I got shocked and thought that the site got hacked or that the the previous admin woke up from a nightmare and remembered he was supposed to maintain a certain website.
I would like to suggest season images for the front page, maybe changing every season (or month), of course images related to that season/month. Also, bring back the previous image.

>Potentially merging or closing some of the older boards (highly debatable — I would prefer to keep them active, but a few may be beyond saving at this point)

Please don't close boards, or if you really really need to, then at least put them in read-only mode for history/archive purpose.

Good luck.