Yes, it seems SG had it set to automatic renewal. This may be a bit of a hassle in drawing traffic away from the old forums, but it doesn’t matter. With active Admins, our community can draw away from the decline it was experiencing and start to grow again.
The switch will be very soon. We’ve retrieved all the boards, and are just making a few final tweaks and so forth. It should be ready by tomorrow. Make sure that you’ve saved any BBCode-heavy posts of yours and any important PMs.
It’s not about protection, really. It’s about not having an admin. The forums have historically been maintained by third parties, and Zanz wanted to keep it that way. We’ll relocate the forums if we have to, of course, but we’re still waiting for Zanz to contact us.
The images probably won’t appear on the official site for a while; our admin is taking a break. They’re there anyway, so I’m not sure why you want them on the official site.