[Administrator]

Logging into the site at the site level is different from logging into the forums area. The databases are separate. By signing up and logging in at the site level, you are allowed to do more stuff, such as submit news, polls, weblinks, view your stats, etc. But you still have to login again when you visit the forums or chat sections as they are seperate entities. We may see about integrating them in the future, so that one login is needed for them all but this would take rewriting some code so that each module would query the same cookie and database tables.