please allow avatars to appear of users who create topics along with topic

I think that having both avatars (topic author plus latest reply poster) would be indeed messy from a visual point of view. Ideally IP.Board could give the choice for admins to choose one or the other. Maybe someone can make a modification. I have no idea how tough that would be. If I had the choice I would pick topic author. I understand that on forums threads don't belong to the topics authors but some forums due to their content may be organised differently. Our forum is mainly about reviews, and there's one thread per review (then the replies are mainly just other members either thanking or making questions, etc), so threads are heavily associated to the topic author in some cases. I'm about to upgrade from 3.1.4, so I guess that soon I'll find out what our membership thinks about it. :)