Hello,
Yes, the budget I mentioned is higher than the posted one but as you have mentioned it is a forum design project, there is huge amount of work which will be needed to be done.
We would like to get the complete idea of the project, as the shared information is not enough to conclude the scope of your project. we can into a conversation and have a discussion regarding:
# No. of pages
# design layout
# Reference site (if any)
# Your preference
And few more factors. Lets design a interactive layout for the forum and if possible share the URL to your forum so that we can analyze it too and then come up with some outstanding ideas for the same.
We will decide the time and budget after we have a thorough discussion.
Hope to hear back from you.
Regards,
Mayank