ViolaF wrote:perfect tool, wintstar. dont notice the novices

Novices? Everybody who posted here has been registered longer than you and has more posts than you. They also have more posts than winstar and all but one were registered longer (and that was only by a matter of months).
If anybody implements this, there should still be a message that the board is currently offline. Maybe that's what "Guests receive a message when you click a username" is supposed to mean, but I don't know. What does clicking a user name have to do with anything?
I'm still not convinced, though. For example, even if the board is only seasonal, that doesn't mean that people wouldn't want to post during the summer. For example, a ski lodge might still want inquiries about when reservations would be accepted.
Also, you don't want to confuse users with two different "offline" options. If you're upgrading to a new version, which requires a database update, you probably would want the board disabled (as you do currently), not offline.
Finally, technically the board is still online if you can view the index or topics or whatever. Even a disabled board is still online.
Steve