2 Questions, Avatars & Colors

[Buttinski]

Hello Vb People,
I have a couple of issues on my board which are making me crazy.

1) Avatars uploads are being funky. When new members wish to add a new avatar to their profile they have 2 options in the UserCP, they can supply a web-address, or they can upload from their local machine. At one point, this was completely broken, though I found out through my host that I needed a "tmp" directory. I created this and it semi-solved my problem. I have now successfully used both of these options (web address / upload). Though both timeout and cannot perform the function after 2 minutes of loading, about 9 out of 10 times. What could this problem be??

The error message I get is:

Connection Closed by Remote Server
http://www.buttinski.net/forum/profile.php

2) My colors are showing wierd. In the userCP, avatar screen, profile screen, private message screens & others it looks bugged. It'll show one color for about 70% of the screen, and another color for the bottom 30%. (the bottom color is the one I specified).

I am boggled on both of these issues. Please take a look at www.Buttinski.net if you need to see an example. I will check this post frequently if any other questions need answering. Thank you for your time.

Brett