I swear the person designing this website must be related to the owners. There is no other logical explanation.

Yup, either that or a member of the same tight social group, like a small church congregation or something. I live in a small town and see that happen all the time, you're obligated to use someone because they're a member of 'the group', they turn out to be utterly useless but you can't fire them because they're a member of 'the group'. And then they present you with a huge bill and somehow you're obligated to pay it because of the group thing again. Or maybe the web designer is being paid a lot of money by a consortium of opposition sites, with instructions to run it into the ground, one small 'improvement' at a time, until even the diehard fans jump ship.

It is now 3 weeks since the list of problems was passed to management. I reckon we have about 2 more weeks of waiting/hoping for some improvement, then management will decide that the storm has passed, problem has gone away so it'll be back to business as usual on the slowest, most infuriating forum on the web. And everything will be Awsome Awsome.