I uploaded the plugin through the Simplepress uploader and then activated the plugin. The list of plugins disappeared and the forum is just displaying a blank page. Help!
http://livingonanarrowboat.co.uk/forum/living-on-a-narrowboat/
Can you check the folder name where the plugin installed into (by default under wp-content/sp-resources/forum-plugins/) Does it have a ‘1’ or an ‘-1’ on the end? If so can you remove it please and see if that resolves it?
I deleted the plugin from the Simplepress plugins folder which cured the immediate problem but, yes, it did have a 1 after the folder name. I’ll try to install it again this evening, remove the 1 if it’s there and see if it does the trick. Thank you.
Great. Still trying to get to the bottom of that one which seems to be a problem somewhere with the interface between the SP and WP update tools.
OK. The plugin is working. Now what do I do with it? All I can unearth about the plugin is that a custom theme needs to be designed before it can be used. Is this the case? How much work is involved and is it something that anyone can do?
Ah – I believe the Codex entry is due to be populated any day now. Sorry about that.
Creating a custom theme is a breeze – very simple – and of course by doing so you avoid it being overwritten during future updates. If you would like to start with that it would be best and I can find out what is needed for the features plugin as I did not write that and have not studied it yet.
This is the guide for creating a custom theme: http://codex.simple-press.com/codex/themes/theme-basics/creating-a-theme/
quick help guide… 
first, you need to select which topics and posts you want to feature… they are separate entities and are not mixed.. you can feature topics, you can feature posts or you can feature both in two separate lists…
you select which topics and/or post to feature one of two ways… while viewing the topic or post, you can select it with the forum tools… or on forum – components – featured topics/posts you can specify which topics and posts you want to feature by topic ID and/or post ID…
once you have a list of topics and/or posts to feature, you display them where you want (sidebar, foot, other page, etc) with a template tag or shortcode…
sp_FeaturedTopicsShortcode()
sp_featured_topics (shortcode so add start/stop [])
sp_FeaturedPostsTag
sp_featured_posts (shortcode so add start/stop [])