Hi Rowan, sorry to hear you are having trouble. I know there were some issues with the File Exchange lately. With Richard moving servers, and the updates. Are you using the latest version? 8.5.1.3? It looks like the exchange update is gone, as the deck are not falling under themselves anymore.
As for the forum, are you accessing it from your browser or within the Orphalese program? If the latter, that might be some of the trouble. It's easiest to use, and keep yourself logged in, if you access the forum from your browser (IE, Firefox, ect.). You can access your profile from the
User Control Panel (UCP). To change your password, you need to access Profile>Account Settings from within the UCP.
I'm not exactly sure what happened to all the backgrounds, it seems like that was talked about a long time ago, but I don't know remember what the final resolution was.
Hopefully things will work themselves out for you, as it is a great program, and sometimes what we are used to isn't what we have to use. I know when I 1st started with Orphalese I was quite fried as well, but now... it's 2nd nature
