Couple of things i've noticed
 

One, the longer a thread gets or with pics, the longer it takes to load and in the meantime you have a black screen.

Two, how about a link "back to top" or a dropdown menu letting you go back to forum at the page bottom so you don't have to scroll all the way back up to the top of the page to get to the navigation?

to solve #2's problem.... find the "Home" key on your keyboard... it takes you to the top

Good call on #2 Nick. I think that beats adding another button to every post.

On the first one, you guys let me know how many messages/threads you want on each page. I started out with 50, but then I changed it to 100. The old system had between 100 and 200 I believe. I'm hoping to make this a feature that each user can control themselves and that way everyone will be happy! :)