most of the techie forums I use send e-mails when a reply is posted. Guests would have to offer e-mail addresses. And I imagine that this represents a lot of programming for Max.

Maybe newbies and guests could get an onscreen reminder (cookies would drive this) that they have to keep looking because e-mail notification is not part of the process.

A floating message layer hidden and popping-up would address this. Not that difficult - I do it for drop-down menus on my site - though I haven't messed with cookies yet.

My cousin tried posting and assumed this was a UK based forum. He lives in T'ronto. People approach everything with some pre-conceptions, the trick is guessing them and addressing the most common.

Topsie - you can choose not to print backgrounds in most browsers I use (& I use as many as I can to check my site).