Interesting that the site design is being discussed - I just used this website for my visual design literacy class. I had to write about the design of the website in terms of dimensions of design and discuss if it was effective or not. There IS a science to this stuff (for the most part) and the design of the website could very well detract people from entering the community.
That being said, in my paper, I rated the user's experience as being very poor if you're unfamiliar with the site and only acceptable to those who are familiar with the site. The number one problem was with dimension 3, which basically asks "if I'm unfamiliar with this site, how easy will it be for me to navigate it and learn information effectively?" With the TUS site, it reeeeeeeally struggles with that dimension. If your goal is to welcome and assimilate newcomers into the community through TUS, the site HAS to be intuitive and user friendly. According to the laws of visual design, you ARE detracting new players with the poor layout of the site.
What are the problems? Some have already pointed out some obvious problems. Even if you can't pinpoint specific problems with the design, you could still open up the site and think "this just looks eww". The newcomers who come to the site don't all know the nuances of visual design, but they can still recognize if a site is unappealing as a whole.
I'm not a professional and I can't tell you exactly what to do, but you have to acknowledge when there is a problem and try to fix it
