The site got a redesign last summer. If you do a Google image search for "silk road drug market", you'll find screenshots of the old design, like here: http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/traveling-down-the-silkroad-to-buy-drugs-with-bitcoins As for how busy the forums were, go the "Stats" page at the bottom of the main page, and click the + icons to expand the months and days, and you'll see how many posts and max currently online the forum used to get. It's definitely grown over time.