is it possible to put style folders in a different location?
 

Just wondering if its possible to move the images folders for styles to a common folder, instead of having them all over the place in cases with multiple skins.

I create a styles folder inside my forum's images folder and all of the styles are uploaded to the styles folder. That way, they're all in one place.

how do you make sure to point all the graphical references to the right place? how do you know if you missed something?

You set all your image paths in admincp-style manager, by modifying the "path to post icon folder", etc...

Bye going into the All styles option your able to change the paths to all the folders, for example the default is images/(foldername)/ the images folder is in the root so you'd be able to make a new folder like files/(foldername)/ like what I done :]