The links are bright white and the background is black. I don't know how it can be easier to read.
Unless you have a very low screen resolution and the card image goes behind the text?
We'll create our own theme in a few weeks and we'll make sure to avoid such problems at this time. For now the theme is a generic one, slightly modified by SG, and yes it's not perfect.
Yes, that particular text should be easy to read because it's white text with almost black (#222222).
As for all text and contrast issues on this forum.. those exist simply because I haven't done them yet. This forum is still under construction and will start to look better every day. If you find something that looks horrible, it's usually not me who has put it there, it's just that I haven't done anything with it yet and it still has the default SMF 2.0 theme settings.
Chriskang, we won't be doing our own theme "in a few weeks" because..
1. It's not even close to being top priority
2. We won't be doing any custom themes until Simple Machines Forum 2.0 is fully released (this one is still Release Candidate 2, and there could be even a RC3). After it's fully released, we have to wait for mod developers to update their mods (aka plugins) to avoid any compatibility issues.
Everyone likes pretty things but I don't think anyone can say this forum layout sucks. It's perfectly ok for the time being (after I fix the text issues, etc). Top priority now is to add more content and make it all work smoothly. Then later after the SMF 2.0 is released, we can concentrate on the layout.