Since I've installed the forum .. I've received 2 emails that my site was down with 403 error. I'm not sure why, but I can see the site and everything.

 I don't have wp-cache activated, although I did have wp-cache v2.0.22 prior to upgrade to wp v2.1 but deactivated it and deleted the cache folders.

 I've got about 40 plugins, but none should really affect the permalinks, which, I did  updated since the install. But, if anything .. shouldn't just the forum be affected .. and not my whoe blog?

I managed to figure out to change the avatar folder in the plugin directory to chmod 777 to accept my avatar upload.

 If I were to take a guess - is it possible that because I do not have it in my root folder .. or that I renamed the forum page slug .. something is up?

 It's at http://1800HART.com/blog/forum/

 Any ideas? t.i.a.

I've never edited any config.php file …  do you mean the root wp-config.php .. or another?

In upgrading 27 blogs to wordpress version 2.1 .. I've noticed that on a few select blogs I've had to actually remove the wp-cache files from the plugin folder even though it was not activated, to work properly but in most cases just deleting the wp-content/cache/ folder and deactivating the plugin works fine for me.

 That 403 error seemed to be only seen in Australia (2 instances) but after people in Europe were also able to see it .. I went to sleep last night knowing it was working - and working fine in this subfolder! If I see anything unusual, I will let you know.

 Take care.

HART (1-800-HART)

Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada

 PS: Do you have a feature request? It would be nice if there was a library of avatars that are 50×50 size (or ones I can create) to offer users to select in case they don't have their own. That .. or the ability to automatically shrink avatars to the 50×50 size to fit. I know it took me 4 times being rejected before I decided to just resize my own .. (3 times plus one realizing that the ../plugins/simple-forum/avatars/ folder should be chmod 777)