no :( i got a feeling its a lot easier than I am making it out to be. I just haven't found it yet. I just wish body would apply to the entire page and not just to the forum element...that is what is killing me.

well it should change when changeing it in stylevars,,

But it dosent, just praying they got stylevar set up for gold
so were able to change that background.

tryed all options in this post aswell.. No luck either

This may help: Set your forum/document width (can't remember what the stylevars call it) to 100% and then in your last container (the final one around header and footer set the width to what you want the forums to be. If done properly you should then have the full width to play with and obviously you can just add further containers around the 'forum container'.

i.e. at start of header.
<div class="forum_container" style="width:700px;">

and then close it at the end of footer. And as I said if you want more divs just put them outside of that container (i.e. above it). I think that should give you more of a chance of doing what you need.Obviously the width can be put into the css for whatever class name you used. i just put it in-line to show what I meant.