I am absolutely astonished at the ineptitude of this forum developer.

Is there actually a forum developer? I thought perhaps the web developer had been suspended or sacked, given that the appalling state of things has remained relatively unchanged for some months now. If said forum developer was actively trying to 'fix' or 'improve' things they would almost certainly be getting much worse. I think his/her skillset peaked somewhere around the switch to circular avatars, anything beyond that proved too ambitious.