i thought you'd gotten this to work blindchild02?
all you have to do is nest your forum within another table. so create a table with the images and with a blank td in the middle that you place your forum within.
it all depends on the size of the images and wether you want it to frame the entire forum or just the sides or just the top and bottom. also depends on whether you'll be using CSS to set those background images or HTML... i recommend CSS.
so in the header template, just add the top portion of the new table that will have the background frame, as well as the left side (if you're doing the sides as well), and then in the footer template, add the right side td (if you are doing the sides as well) and the bottom.
example
you would put something like this at the very top of your header template, being careful to edit it so that it matches your forum (style, size, image locations, etc). if you don't understand this, go to www.w3schools.com and brush up on your html, k?
<table><tr><td background="TOP IMG URL" colspan=3 width=XX height=XX></td></tr><tr><td background="LEFT SIDE IMG URL" width=XX></td><td>
then in your footer, you'd place your right side and the bottom.
</td><td background="RIGHT SIDE IMG URL" width=XX></td></tr><tr><td background="BOTTOM IMG URL" colspan=3 width=XX height=XX></td></tr></table>
and you're done.
again, make certain to adjust your width as well as your height for the top and bottom tags, and tinker with it until it's just right. i suggest you use CSS instead, but that's a personal preference.
as a last note, this won't add nice rounded off corners to your forum, as you would need to create each corner seperately and place them into their own td's in the corners, which then affects the colspans and such within all of the above noted example. if you plan to go that advanced, then study tables at w3schools, and git to work... lol.