Can anyone tell me how I can pop up announcements to anyone using the board. I want to notify people that I will be shutting it down in 10 mins. Or does that already exist?

Also is there a hack for allowing users to page one another? I want them to be able to click on a user's name at the bootom of the board where they are listed as being logged on and then pop up a private message to them.

do what i do, post a thread for the announcement in a forum and then in your header for the forums, add a text and link to the announcement...works well

you could have several standard announcements in the header and comment them out... so you can pick and choose the announcements when needed

Sounds interesting but what's the link to in header?

it's to the thread with the news/announcement

i.e. http://www.animeboards.net/forums/ i have 2 announcements at the top in my header

one links to a thread asking for visitor/member feedback

one links to my announcement that my forum will be down this Saturday so i can do my first ever backup of the database - it's going to be a scary day for me... hope i don't stuff it up :)