Thanks for your comments. I'll take a look at the META tags.

As for the javacript the explanation given by Bruce Lawson is that the target="_blank" attribute no longer works in XHTML Strict. I've written my page in XTML Strict.

The w3c has excluded this according to the (logical) reasoning that the coding is supposed to dictate what happens within the page, whereas opening a new window is considered to be outside the page. However, as explained, I have removed this javascript because with Firefox right-clicking on a link brings up a menu and one of the items on that menu allows the link to be opened in a new window. This makes the javascripting unnecessary at least for Firefox. I haven't quite understood how this bulletin board can be used to exchange messages with other members, by the way.