at the admin portal thingy
when i wanted to edit the portal settings
there's no save button!
i waited for hours!
but none
and all other options are gone 

Want to make the background image or color of your forum a different color/background image when you are at the Portal then it is when you are at the Forum itself? 

Easy to do.
At the top of one of your Portal's html blocks add this:
(you dont need to make a new block.. just add it to ONE of the exisiting html blocks)


Replace #808080 with the color code you want to use
Replace IMAGE URL with the background image url.

If needed add css settings for repeating, position, etc. for the background image.

If you are not using a background image for your forum and are going to only change colors remove this line from the code:

background-image:  url(IMAGE URL);

set up an html block in the portal and put the code in it.

how do i get it to say who posted in it, and what time they posted it???

Thanks this helped me a lot

Umm, I have no idea how to set up a random video.  I actually tried to set up a slideshow with flash images but don't have the knowledge to make that work. I think it would have to be something that SMF would have to program in like recent posts, images and topics.

Is it possible to add a backround image to any individual block so that you can place text overtop of the image ?

Cheers.