It seems like the consensus is that Tiki's public pages, especially the home pages that visitors see first, should be simpler with not such a huge amount of information. This is what I've been thinking too. There are two things to take care of related to this. First we need to have an updated theme that doesn't look out of place among other similar kinds of web sites. Second, we need to trim the content and number of links to a reasonable level, so the page isn't cluttered and confusing.
People have written about this, about the best content for a good first impression, for blogs or web sites in general. Here are the main points of one post from http://www.creativebloq.com/web-design/planning-your-users-journey-121413693:
01. Avoid too many links 02. Menus send mixed messages 03. Study heat maps 04. Use images 05. Keep it clean