Newbie questions - templates, mass registration

[Bostrom23]

Hey guys, new to the forum and new to vB also. Couple of quick questions for starters. I use vB 4.1.4.

I want to use the CMS for running some sort of news portal for forum members. The content of the portal shouldn't be visible (except for preview excerpts) to guests.

Also, I'm having some difficulties with the grid and the templates, simply cant get it to look the way I want it, which is something like this;



In the Editor Toolbar I've chose "News (1col+300px)" layout and 1x2 Content columns.

It's close enough to the general idea, but the problem is that the top story, the one that takes up the whole width of the column, also has a 160x110 thumbnail for the preview image. I'm using Complete VB Shiny Blue skin.

Another thing I want to implement on the forum is mass registration. People on the forum will gain access from my email database (customers).

What would be the most elegant way to send all those people on my list an email with some kind of username, password and activation link?

Thanks for any answers, would be great to know in which direction to steer with this

[Bostrom23]

Anyone?

[y2ksw]

The most elegant way to create a lot of users is to write a script with random passwords and mail your customers while they are registered. However it's sort of 2-5 days work. Considered you may create about 300 accounts per hour by hand, maybe that's less smart, but faster.