Theme development

I'm trying to theme my forum posts and I run into something I need help with.

I'm using drupal 4.7 rc2 with the flatforum.module and its provided template.php and node-forum.tpl.php.

Inside of node-forum.tpl.php the line:

This must have been asked somewhere, but after searching for about 20 minutes I can't find anything. How can I put an ad after the first node on my homepage? I know there's a loop, but I can't figure out how to set a variable outside node.tpl.php so I can increment the loop.

This is what I'd like to do:
if ($postnum == $showads) {

ad here.

} $postnum++;

It's not working because setting $postnum and $showads in page.tpl.php doesn't allow node.tpl.php to see them.

Hello all,

I have been attempting to figure this problem out for a week+ now. I have searched drupal extensively, but found no mention of this. What I am seeing is that my buddylist links are not re-populating my user_profile.tpl.php form with the buddies information when they are clicked. I am fairly new to drupal so there might be a simple mistake that I am making. Can someone please take a look at my code (below) and give me a push in the right direction?

template.php

<?php
/**
* Catch the theme_profile_profile function, and redirect through the template api
*/
function phptemplate_user_profile($user, $fields = array()) {
  // Pass to phptemplate, including translating the parameters to an associative array. The element names are the names that the variables
  // will be assigned within your template.
  /* potential need for other code to extract field info */
return _phptemplate_callback('user_profile', array('user' => $user, 'fields' => $fields));
  }
?>

I need a light theme, simular to www.jobs.ch based on PHPTemplate.
Please advice.

I need help making my forum look like a forum. I know it can be done because it has been done on various sites.

One example is: http://gallery.menalto.com/forum

Before you point me to http://drupalart.org/phpbb , i have already tried that. It is a decent start, but only seems to work with drupal 4.6.x. I am using 4.7 rc2.

I have done the flatforum module and I can't get it the way i want it.

Sorry for being prolific, but here's another fun one.

I very recently discovered (because I don't usually check these things when they were working before) that the front page to one of the sites I'm working on kinda borked. Oops. I get a nice white screen of nothing rendering, where before there was a nice front page with all kinds of stuff you might expect on a front page (log in box, new stuff, mission statement, etc).