[chrispadfield]

hehe i just started some part time work on this. What i have done is:

- add an extra field to user table for special member
- if special member then they display a specific icon beneath their username (ie subscriber icon)
- if special member then the header and footer are different. I use my styles for different forums so i could not have a banner free style, instead my header and footer (which are global) always have the banner in and i created one without the banner.

I didn't want to do this by usergroup because again i use that seperation for other things so a subscriber user group was not practical.

Anyway, that is it really. Just thought i would explain what i have done in case anyone in same cicrumstances. Over riding pm limits, custom avatars, etc is simple from here on.

It is going to be harder using my method to have a forum just for these members. Not sure the best way to do this yet really.

p.s. a cron job is not really anything to do with mysql and php it is simply a server command to make a certain program/script run at a set period.