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If I've got a limited amount of terrain, it goes towards the middle of the board, leaving the deployment zones empty if need be.

Forests depends on the game and the size of the actual model trees. For 40k, placing trees on an area of felt or similar (or using a Citadel Wood) works well. For something like Infinity or Kill Team, I use individual trees as separate terrain elements, as the single models can move from one to another easily enough.

I don't play 40k often, but when I do, we load up the board with terrain. I have yet to run into a player who refused to let me put at least some LOS blocking terrain on the board. Why would you want to play on an empty table? Dull, boring, snore.

I make my own terrain for home games. Guess that's "illegal". I'm such a rebel.

Not sure I understand the TLOS issue... doesn't the 40k rulebook say that ruins, forests, and even craters provide a cover save?

In the Battlefield Terrain section, the rulebook defines "Difficult Ground", identifies woods as one type of Difficult Ground, and then says that "Unless specifically noted otherwise, a model in cover behind difficult terrain has a 5+ cover save". Earlier, the phrase "in cover behind" is defined as being at least 25% obscured (using the TLOS rules). So, going by that, your miniature needs to actually be behind a tree.

However, later on in the Terrain Datasheets section, the Dense Thicket rule of the Twisted Copse terrain datasheet (composition: 1 Citadel Wood) says Models ... receive a 5+ cover save, regardless of whether or not they are 25% obscured".

Ruins and craters are defined specifically in the rules as granting cover saves even if models are not actually obscured.

The Terrain Datasheets section then goes on to encourage you to make up your own datasheets for your own scratch-built terrain, so you could define your own terrain that grants a better cover save than 5+ or blocks LOS entirely if you want to.

The issue isn't the rules. The issue is people being insufficiently creative.

As far as I'm concerned there should be lots and lots of terrain on a board. The more the better.

Of course there should be plenty of LOS blocking stuff as well. Good games should have plenty of fire and manuever and no army should be able to simply sit in a corner and dominate the board. Any game where that is allowed to happen is not one I want to be playing.