Post installation

Ok I had asked a question sometime back about how to send newsletter to the community and in return got a reply here http://drupal.org/node/115988 but it's not what I wanted.

I had seen a drupal website which is having a newsletter form like this on front page http://img457.imageshack.us/img457/53/letterwu4.png. I am sure it's just a module but which one is this ?

I haven't noticed anything mentioned about consecutive failed login attemps, so is there something done to stop someone from creating a bot that tries logging in tens of thousands of times to crack password of some user open?

I installed and enabled the Views, Bonus Views and Panels modules; I enabled "Panels: Teasers, 2 columns" in Bonus Views; I selected "Panels: Teasers, 2 columns" from my view's Block > View Type menu; and I enabled the Block.

... but nothing displays. If I change the view type to Full Nodes, Teaser List, etc., then I get my view... but in just one column of course.

Any ideas as to what I am missing?

My users have a profile filed where they select their location from a taxonomy that I have entered. These are about 20 cities to choose from.

Then I create these city pages such as

domain.com/city/chicago
domain.com/city/la
domain.com/city/detroit

On these city pages I want to show a list of users with avatar who have selected that city as their current location. How can I do this?

When I create a view and output in a table the table is only as wide as the fields need and these means that all of the columns are really small and the text is harder to read. How can I force the table to be the width of the main section on my page.

Also have the same problem on the PM screen. The table that shows new messages is only as big as the message title and it looks bad.

I guess it is almost an embarassing question, however I ma new to drupal. I have been using texpattern so far and in the admin there was a tab for "view page". I have installed Drupal successfully, however the index.php file, which normally is the output page has all the admin links and modules, so the question is where is the output page?

Thanks in advance!