Yes its all in the CSS here is my site forums if you like the look I can help you.
How I did it is this. first I changed my css Using a child theme I just added this css to my style.css (Important to use a child theme so you don’t lose your changes.)
#bbpress-forums .bbp-forums-list li {
display: none !important;
}
.bbp-forum-title{
display: block !important;
font-size: 22px;
font-weight: bold;
border-top: 15px solid blue;
boder-top-left-radius:5px;
boder-top-right-radius:5px;
-moz-border-radius: 5px;
-webkit-border-radius: 5px;
margin-top: 10px;
margin-bottom: 10px;
}
.bbp-topic-title {
font-size: 16px !important;
}
What this did is I made multiple forums instead of categories. when I made the forums I used the text area to include the descriptions. Left the main topic forums closed. so no one could post on there.
I then made sub forums (hence using my main forums as category tags) and again used the text area for the description while creating the forums. I left these open so post could be made in there.
Now I have all kinds of styling you can change. Play with the borders margins colors and text size until you get what you like. I also found the text size to be too small for the descriptions so I used the plug in tinymce advanced to add custom fonts, font-sizes and colors for the descriptions.
