If you are going to ceate a new message board and try to move your current community (I would recommend that) invest in a VB bulletin licence and you will be able to optimize it properly and it is not as prone to hacking and spamming as others.
Then I would start by adding plain HTML pages on a template (you can get them free as mentioned above, or custom made very cheaply).
It’s easy that way, and the engines like it. Once you get the hang of it you can always change to a more complex program.