Andy, thank you for the attempt. I was hoping it would be as simple as you thought it might be. alas.

Brewt - I didn't want anyone at all to be able to reply to a post in this particular forum. not even the original poster (though they could still edit their post). So the read/reply won't work in this instance. A write only function for the forum would indeed have worked. thanks for taking the time though, much appreciated.

Here's a stupid question, can you change the color of 'reply' maybe? I'm just thinking what if the color could be the same as the background and therefore users wouldn't be able to see it, maybe they wouldn't think about it. A clumsy hack indeed, but maybe.