Both are points I'm all too aware of. I'm actually a professional web coder, so HTML, PHP and SQL stuff is fortunately all pretty trivial to me. I am however completely inept at anything artistic, always have been, and probably always will be
I've got it in mind that, as and when the forum actually starts to generate a higher level of interest, I'll probably invest some money getting a professional to do some graphical content. The whole site's purely a personal venture though, so that may have to wait until I'm slightly better off. As I'm sure you're probably aware, genealogy has a bit of a habit of consuming spare cash!
Dominic