You've done your background round the wrong way that's why it is looking funny. Make it wider, not taller. So turn it into a strip about 50high x 1028long. Then set that to repeat.

The copyright. I don't care, look at all my work - I don't even bother with my name because I know ways to prove that the work IS mine and I AM THE ORIGINAL CREATOR. To help you remove this pestilence of a copyright, here are a few factors;

1 Keep your .psd. If your work has been stolen, the stealer cannot provide evidence of creation (the .psd file) to show how they did anything. As all they would find is a .jpg image without the .psd. This is generally enough proof for anyone.

2 Time stamps as you said worked with your last forum, as are always handy. You have the last modified option on your computer when you look right click the file and look at it's properties

3 A watermark is much nicer than a copyright image tbh. If you put a watermark on it, that's obvious - such as your name (but make it NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE) or a symbol or some form of 'signature'. If it makes you happy sign a piece of paper, scan it, then use it as a watermark on your works. That way, it's discreet and a stealer doesn't know what to look for on your watermarks, and you do - thus, you can point them out where you hid them, thus proving that you are the creator

Problem solved, remove the stupid copyright.

The on/off icons, I have never told you to leave them blank, however, there are much nicer approaches to these faces, such as putting them in an orb or rounding them up into a nice looking thing. Putting on glosses and things like that. The only problem with the on/offs is that they are square and abrupt.

Menu buttons ARE needed, don't give me crap that there is another skin, I don't care - I'm rating what I see infront of me. Here is some quick stats that I'll tell you.

Your skin is first impression and for most hardcore forum goers or even just general public, the first impression is everything. If some place looks dodgy, most won't touch it, that's what your forum looks to be at the moment.

On average, you get the most hits when your forum is new and not many people know about it and are curious as to what it is. Say you are getting 20 hits a day (not much but yea).

So thats 20 people that are seeing it everyday. They aren't going to come back if they didn't like it the first time. They won't even bother looking at the thread to see the updated version as they know what it's like the first time and cbf with the forum.

So that's 20 people, those 20 people would talk to at least 3 people about a forum in the space of a day.

So thats 20 x 3 = 60 people everyday that you are missing out on. If you continue to expand this through the WOM system that everyone on average talks to at least 3 people in the course of a day either through MSN or whatever, and they don't even mention your forum because it looked bad - your missing a lot of hits here.

The bottom has the chat box, the affiliation system - that's the clutter. If you are going to have things like, set it out nicely and organise it. make it look pretty and perfect and tie in with the rest of the forum. The way you have it placed looks like you have just dumped it there tbh.

The boards all having 1 post, again, first impressions - I don't care how long ago you just opened. People are going to see only 1 post per board. Fill it with rules, starter posts, starter threads so that you get 3 threads 12 posts or something like that. Put in How To: guides and things like that, FAQs are all brilliant methods. Put up some starter RPs and things like that. Why no go out and be the first to explore some place - idc, and idk about how RPs truly work, but thats the kind of things you better be doing.
Fill it with content, your shop means nothing if no one is going adventuring for gold.

Again the alternate skin I dont care about. First impression is the DEFAULT skin that you have showing, not the vF skin.

BTW: I know what Gil is, I cried in FFX don't get me started. But as I stated above, a shop doesn't mean much if people haven't got anything to post about or to USE the items from this shop.

To answer your last question, I did used to do that. I still do it actually, if you haven't checkout PPS do so (my sig) that has a copyright plastered all over it, but you can't see it can you? Why? Cause it's sitting at the bottom of the entire thing under the Copyright, Privacy Policy and ToS. Do something like that if you are so paranoid.

To have people steal things of yours should be a compliment. A compliment to you because they love you so much that they want to be just like you. That's how I look at it, if people want to delete your stuff for it or accuse you of stealing, you have your time stamps your .psds your watermarks and whatnot to back up what you are saying. Trust me, don't bother with the copyright stamps, just watermark things - prettier and even funnier when people do steal the work as they just look like complete idiots when they get caught out.

From there, my rating stays the same 1/10 - this place has a lot of work. An entire skin redevelopment would never really go astray. Find someone that will do that for you

A watermark is a small discreet nearly invisible mark that you leave behind. It's invisible unless you know it's there anyway. Like a word or a symbol that is the same colour as the background with a VERY slight outline or something like that. Something the average person won't spot.

The on/off icons. You shouldn't be paying attention to time. Most well developed forums take MONTHS to develop the skin alone. It's not about how quickly you can open up a forum - but rather, how much it was worth the 4 month wait.

If you are going to be developing a new skin, throw in some crappy menu buttons then until such time.

If you want your active members of Forbidden Reunion to join, then just send out a mass email/PM or something like that, just tell them that this is the future and they will follow if they are true followers of FR.

To go about the tidying up, well, it's more to do with designing of things - like the use of sizing and making sure that it all flows and the style doesn't change. So, the rest of the forum has gradients - but the chat box does not for instance, change in style, creates clutter.

Ok to fix your problem with beginning posts, hang your storyline. You need to re develop it - it wasn't well planned was it? Your storyline needs to be allowing versatility so that other people CAN start the story off rather than relying on a series of posts and a set script. That can be for another section, but to have the entire forum based on a script just restricts people from playing. There should be a scripted and an unscripted area of the forum where people can just RP using their characters and stuff like that.

Maybe you could set it up so that the scripted area had an increase in the characters level and abilities, however, the free RP did not. Don't rely on pre - set character names, rather, use those created by the users of the forum.

I think that would be a much better system, something I would be more inclined to join anyway. It allows for a versatile plot, something that can be changed BY the USERS and not by you.

A .psd is the file extension that Photoshop does use yes. It saves it in a layered format so that you can see a working progress and so that you can edit certain sections at your own desire.

Do you know if CS2 is compatible with Windows Vista at all? That is a lot cheaper than CS3...