Module development and code questions

I came up with an idea for improving the Drupal Forum, it would be based on a 'kudos' style system.

The use of kudos would mean users could see who the senior members were etc. but without the post count SPAM problem. Moderators and Admin's could award a kudos point to a user when they think he has been especially helpful.

This could mean if a user has, say, 30 kudos points after a month he would average 1 kudos a day, this would make him a title like 'dedicated helper' etc.

Hi! I successfully installed image module 4.4.0 on drupal 4.4.0 on a test machine. I can upload images, see thumbnail, if i click thumbnail i see the big image submitted, but if i click the "Image gallery" link under the news in homepage, it points to: http://192.168.0.2/pb/?q=image/tid or http://192.168.0.2/pb/image/tid/ (with or w/out clean urls), that gives me e drupal "page not found" error... how to solve?

I can't get quote.module to work. I have it installed in a fresh version
of Drupal 4.4.0 and have enabled the module in the configuration section.
Then, for example, I have the text 'this is only a test', I click on the "quote"
link, and I get something like this:

quote=philthis is only a test/quote

In the comment field, the preview view and after I've posted it. Meanwhile the quote text is displayed as a link, which are linking to:

OK, I finally worked out how to get cvs versions... and I downloaded fscache and filestore 2, but I'm getting this error message when I click 'submit:

Call to undefined function: md5_file() in .../drupal/modules/fscache.module on line 204

As a total N00B to PHP and sql stuff, I'm presuming this is the bit where it encodes the filename to the sql database, right? Please can anyone tell me why it's undefined?

downloaded the article module, followed the instructions, but the new article link generates a blank white page. Incidentally, the instructions say upload the article.module into the module directory, but nothing else about the other files it comes with. Do you just forgot about them?

Also, the instructions say "set-up configuration options in the article admin section." Well, where's that?

Finally, went to the guy's web page and tried to register in his forum but it wouldn't take the user name and password he sent me.

I would really like to know how the attachments to comments in projects seen on this site work, since I am having big trouble with getting attached file and even filestore to work (no, I haven't found an answer in any other forums).

I'm using Drupal 4.4, have installed the project module (no option for attaching there), in the attached file readme it just says 'plug the functions in their appropriate places' - I don't know what these places are! Can anyone tell me how to add this functionality into my forums so users can attach files to their posts?