Dont worry.... I have several "things" working for me in relation to protection.
I KNOW that Merlin the Wizard causes problems but its still cute to have something like this on my home page to entice people to actually click and visit the XOOPS content pages.
I may delete this at a later date due to browsers blocking active x and the such like and for the newbie browser, this WILL be alarming to them and wont encourage them to discover further.
I really like XOOPS and will continue with this. I have previously tried phpBB2 which was very nice and slick but nowhere near as much content and admin rights as XOOPS has..... However, I gave it up when my site got hacked and of course put me off completely. Hence changing over to xoops.
Fingers crossed.... XOOPS will provide for me exactly my requirements without any hitches for the future.
Many thanks again guys for your constructive criticism....which could so easily have been criticism of the worst kind.