More info I received about the forum operation in response to my questions:
Questions:
1 How can I center the Forum Name at the very top of the forum: Governor Palin Forum
2 Is there or can you have your programmer install a New Posts Button or Icon on the floating nav. bar?
3 The forum was down a lot last night, broken links, etc. Do you know why? Does this happen a lot?
4 Under Appearance what are the html windows for? Under Headers/Footers, Comment Level inline html.
5 Under Appearance what are Preview settings?
6 What is background image? A custom background?
7 The color text selector on posting windows won't open and is stuck on grey Need it fixed
.
8 Can't add picture to signature. The feature doesn't work. I can fill in the image URL but when I click save or whatever the prompt is, it doesn't do anything--doesn't add the picture.
9 How do I ad a url image to the post if I don't want to use the attach picture feature (so I can put pics throughout the post) rather than at the bottom. Using
doesn't work.
10 Will the templates offered for sale on your Sparklit account work with my forum? How can I see a preview WITH my forum information as it would be in real life?
11 Can I add other pictures and info at the top of the page rather than just the banner? If so how?
Thanks!
Answers:
1 If you go into your Administration Menu, and click on the Settings button. Next change the title to
<center>
Governor Palin Forum</center>. This will make it appear in the center above your page.
2 There has been some talk about creating a "New Posts" button for the ActiveBoard. However, since we have not actually started developing it, it may be quite some time before it is created. In the meantime, each forum, topic, etc does have a specific icon that is put in front of it to indicate that it contains new posts. There is also an RSS button option, which will display the most recent posts that have been made. It is essentially a new posts button, but it does require you to have an RSS reader to use it.
3 It does appear that our server was down briefly last night. It appears that our providers in Seattle were having some problems, and it caused a few servers to go down. This doesn't happen often, and in the case of an extended down time, we would offer all of our paying customers compensation.
4 The header/footer HTML areas allow you to add any HTML that you would like to the top and bottom of your ActiveBoard. This can be used to do countless things, pretty much anything that you can do with regular HTML. The comment level inline is a similar feature, however the HTML that you wish to display will appear between comments within a topic, based on the settings that you provide.
5 The Preview settings just allow you to change what exactly the forum preview above will display on it. It is used mostly to see if you like the current style that you have set on your forum.
6 Yes, the background image is an option that will allow you to use an image of your own choosing as a background.
7 This is most likely a known problem that is associated with the new ActiveBar. This problem is currently being worked on, but it the meantime I would suggest either disabling the ActiveBar, or entering full screen mode when you are posting in the Advanced editor.
8 I have not encountered this problem before. I believe that the image you are trying to insert must be hosted online. If this is not the case than that would surely cause the problem. What is the image url of the image that you are trying to add to your signature?
9 When using the advanced editor, there will be a small button in the toolbar that looks like a tree. If you lcick on this button it will allow you to fill out information like the image url and description. Upon clicking insert, it should appear in your post.
10 All of our templates that are online are free to any person with an ActiveBoard account. The easiest way to try out these templates would be to apply them to your forum and take a look. You could also use the preview that is given to you in the Style and Appearance area.
11 By using the header and footer html boxes in the Style and Appearance section of your Administration menu, you can add any image you would like using normal html format.
Unfortunately, we generally leave customizing the forum up to the user. However, I will always be available by this email if you would like any help or tips that I can provide.
If you look to the left of each of these options, you will see that there is an orange question mark. If you click on these, they will give you a description of what each will do. They will probably give you as good a description as I can. =)
The Forum link and Forum Preview codes are HTML snippets, which can be posted into another web page to either create a link to your Activeboard, or to show a preview of what it looks like. The API key is generally not used unless a user has an external website and needs access to some of the things on their board.
I hope I have been able to help, please feel free to email me back with any further questions.
Navigating the Forum--IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ!!
with 4 icons (see 4th picture below-click to enlarge) First blue icon opens a window for "home" 
, "search", "member list", "calendar", "profile" and "in box". They are pretty self exmplanatory.