Queritor,
Most likely you're having the permissions issue because you're showing up as unverified. I noticed your join date is 2004... recently in the past month or so a new system was put in place to better identify customers posts in the forums and the Ticket System is likely tied to the new method. Please follow the steps
here to see if that resolves the permissions issue for you.
For the Contact Us problem, which link exactly took you back to the index? When clicking on the "Contact Us" link above it should take you to
http://www.photopost.com/ppost_contact.pl but perhaps there is a page where it hasn't been updated yet.
Thanks.