1. The vBShop is a neat little market where you can purchase forum goodies with gold. You get gold by posting in non-games forums (i.e Legend of Zelda, General Discussion, etc.). You can't purchase username color (those are earned by getting a rank), but you can purchase a shadow, bold, or underline. You can also purchase a mask from Majora's Mask or a cute little Pokemon. Those are displayed in your postbit (you'll see Squirtle in mine).
2. You can literally put anything in a blog as long as it complies with the rules. The blogs are generally spammy and pointless but they're pretty fun. Anything you want to talk about, you can blog about.
3. Threads that stay at the top of the list are called stickies. Only moderators and administrators can sticky threads. If you post your thread, you could probably ask a mod to sticky it. If they think it's a good idea, they will. It's up to their discretion.
4. There's not much of a point to it other than having a cute little list of people you're friends with. I have a couple hundred friends and I obviously don't talk to each one of them, but I like sending friend requests to let people know that I am indeed a friendly person.
5. Gold is virtual forum money. You get 5 gold for each post in a non-games forum (but no gold for posting in a games forum). As far as I know that's the only way to get gold but I'm not 100% sure.
edit: You can get gold by particpating in competitions, such as the Zelda Gameplay Challenge.
6. I don't really know what you'd be putting up for download here. We don't allow advertisements and the like.
7. I know that when you set an avatar, the forum will automatically resize most pictures. It will not resize signature images. You might be able to resize it by using HTML code but HTML is disabled in signatures anyway. I usually resize images in Paint, to be honest. If you can't resize it yourself, you can always ask another member if they would do so for you. We have many good graphic artists here.
Feel free to shoot me or one of the mods a PM if you need anymore help.
