Welcome back to the world of tgp
A lot of things have changed over the years and you'll need to make some adjustments now.
Sponsor designs, ripped FHG, and I'll even say the sponsor graphics like headers, footers, etc, don't use it. FHG server a variety of purposes, but one of them is not to submit them as your own to TGPS. Owners can do that themselves and cut out the middle man altogether.
As for the headers, footers, etc that sponsors provide...I personally am saying don't use them as you're in competion with a lot of other webmasters and those sponsor provided graphics get old really quickly.
As for sponsor content...you can use that to submit to tgps, but remember that again there is that competition factor. Use a oversaturated sponsor and you'll find that a lot of your galleries will just get deleted because the content is just too common. When I do use sponsor content I try to find smaller sponsors with less saturated content.
Simple galleries, personally I like them still, and I like clean looking galleries that focus on the content.
Ramster pretty much has it right regarding partner accounts and tgps. Most of the larger ones are Partner only, a lot of them have gone paid submits, and it's probably harder now to break into tgp submitting then it was in the past.