Cool--he's only on his 3rd post here and already I've been a big help! Awright.

Grungi's right about Ulgoth's Beard, just go north from Wyrm's Cossing (the bridge to BG city).
The "message icons?" You mean the thing where you chose a jack-o-lantern, right? Yeah, they're just for fun, although they're best used to describe the mood of your post. I used to use the hammer icon a lot, but then I stopped because the hammer's kind of an offical symbol of Ironworks, and it wouldn't be right to use it for anything but "offical" posts. That's also why I don't use the cat icon much, as it's Ziroc's (our fine webmaster's) cat.
Some of the nifty screenshots on my site are from either
www.gamebanshee.com, or
www.planetbaldursgate.com.
One of those sites has a HUGE archive of screenshots (some of them are cool, some of them are funny, and some of them were submitted by Sparky the Barbarian), but I forget which one. Now that my computer's working again, though, I'll gradually replace the screenshots copied from their site with ones of my own.