Why can't I get my bbs to look at cool as this one?

You should be able to, with an appropriate amount of pounding on the stylesheet code. I assume you're referring to the purple background with the orange links?

this one been totally modified from the UBB Threads original files?

Not totally. There have been a few minor tweaks here and there, but nothing major in terms of code. The main thing you should know... The purple/orange color scheme used to be one of the original default color schemes for this software back before UBB bought out WWWThreads and took over the code. I don't think the purple color scheme is even present in newer versions. We've deliberately kept the color scheme in place as we upgraded because (a) it's so cool, and (b) we all got into the habit of quoting people in orange, and that doesn't look good except in this color scheme.

Also, the original WWWThreads software was a lot simpler and has a much cleaner interface than the newest UBBThreads stuff. When UBB bought them, they added a lot of clutter and bloat. We've actually held off on doing certain upgrades because we didn't want to add bloat and clutter that couldn't be disabled to "make it work like it used to work". I think that the most recent versions allow for us to disable some of the more irritating features, and I think Tom's been talking about patching up again. Each time he's patched up in the past, he's been careful to make sure all the existing style and features are kept in place.

So basically, what you're seeing here (in terms of looks) is an old version of WWWThreads.