1) I don't know what problems you have been having connecting to Downawire, are you trying to link from work or at home? if work it may be blocked for some obscure reason here is a working link for the site I know it's up as I have checked several times over the past few days. Digital Photo club

The site administrator DerSarek and Skippy-ish Guy only update the site on the weekends. so pictures that are sent in during the week will take a while for them to sort, size and post. You can help this process by the following :
1) Limit the size of the e-mail to under 2Mb including photos. If necessary send two or three e-mails with only a few pictures on each.
2) Don't sent all the pictures, pick out the best 2 or 3 and send those. (I'm probably a big offender on this one).
3) Use Moderate sizing and JPG compression on the pictures. (I find that 900pixels in the largest dimension, and about 80% compression works well for starters).
I'll be passing this on to Skippy-ish so he can include it in either the Diary info or the weekly posting as everyone can benefit from it.