Default blocks such as topic and post feeds are helping out to avoid installing Wordpress or other CMS to the customize the front page. But, I think very simple changes like below will help us to even more customize the front page.
1) Adding options to show thumbnail along with the topic title (first image from the post content can be showed as thumbnail in the front page block)
2) Option to disable/enable views, author, date, replies Or Option to just show the title of the topic.
I think these changes will allow lot of users to avoid Wordpress installations for home page.
Note : I searched to see if these customizations are already available but did not find any posts related to this. Sorry if this is a repost.