Hey thanks. I had initially tried on 960 grid. But somehow couldn't fit in the sidebar in the whole design. So thought of making it widescreen. But yes I'll definitely look into the use case again.
I have purposely kept the design pedestrian and thats what the website name signifies: board "LITE". Ever wondered why people prefer Gmail over Hotmail or Google over Yahoo, or for that matter Facebook over MySpace?
Regarding the Welcome message, its just a starter topic. It will roll down when new topics are created.
If your topics get lost and you are unable to find them, you can search for the IDs(if you remember of course) in the searchbar.
Thanks Tony. The site is useful for creating discussions in variety of categories and not limited to a single subject like stackoverflow is. This might look like a difficult aim to achieve. I am willing to take the risk. Later on I plan to set preferences for individual users so they get to see topics relevant to their own liking.