Module development and code questions

I'm modifying the story module to create a custom staff content type that basically has a photo, their role and a biography. I've got the module modified and saving the custom data to my custom table except for the image. I've been looking through the image module and the upload module and come across file_check_upload and file_save_upload but I can't seem to get them to work.

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this. Someone please tell me if it should be elsewhere.

I'm having problems installing the phpbb module. I have followed the instrustions at http://kepp.net/drupal/ very carefully including installing phpBB in a sub-directory of my drupal installation called forums. This seems to be the source of my problems as both phpbb.module and the .htaccess file appear to conatin references to phpBB2 as the phpbb directory.

I got as far as instruction 28 - install the integration module. I did this as instructed. However, when I tried to open my site in my browser to carry out intruction 29 I got this error message:

_phpbb_db(): Failed opening 'phpBB2/config.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in /homepages/15/d159382655/htdocs/cms/modules/phpbb.module on line 277.

I have tried changing the name of the phpbb directory through my FTP programme with limited success. It got rid of the error message and let me back into my drupal pages. This let me perform instruction 29 though the phpbb module was already enabled when I got there. However, I am now stumped on intsructions 30 and 31. When I go to administer | settings | phpbb there are no dialogue boxes - just the single word Array along with two buttons, one to save changes and the other to return to default settings.

So, my questions:

Is changing the name of the phpbb directory an OK thing to do at this stage, or do I really need to uninstall phpbb and reinstall in a directory called phpBB2?

Not sure if this is an theme issue or something else.. but I am trying to use theme_user_picture. In fact I took the code and replacated it to theme_pod_user_picture to take out the div but does not seem to fix my issue.

Issue:
I have a frameset where I want to display the 5 users that are similar to another user. I can get the users pictures to display into that frameset but it also displays the pictures above the other frame sets.

so I have something like:

a user begins to edit any node. after they start that process, but before the node is presented, i need to check some conditions specific to the node and route the user accordingly.

for example: a user clicks the edit button on a node. the module checks some user perms and for an existing working copy of that node. if there is an existing copy, then direct them to that node. if there is no existing working copy, ask for comfirmation to create a new working copy and then direct them to the new working copy's edit form.

Hello,

I'm trying to extract information only from the top node that is shown in a node listing.
By first I mean first visible on the CURRENT page. If I navigate to page #6 in node listing and I have 10 teasers per page, I want to extract information about 60th node displayed.

Any suggestions how to do this?

omi

Is there someone working on a module to ask an anonymous user their age? And allow or deny access based on the response. I have searched the module discussion forum and have not seen anything like that. Maybe I am searching for the wrong thing. If there is not, could some one point a "newbie module developer" to the right place in the drupal index.php module load/startup to build something like that?

Thank you.