2 things,
yesterday some People complained to me that that starter area would not work, namely the board to apply for a role, the red re-invitation board, and one guy got his role approved but cannot Change from visitor to lurker. No clue if that is fixed yet, if not perhpas one check the boards.

and if I visit the Homepage of the DE daily i often get blocked by Kaspersky warning me of trojan on the site. Not sure of that is the case or a false Alarm.