Well for one, editing a file called index.php won't get you anywhere. In fact most of the time you pretty much don't need to edit files at all anymore. So anyway I think the problem here is either I'm not hearing what you're saying the way you intended or you're not using terminology I associate with b2evolution. Either way, a link to your blog and an explanation of what you want to do is a lot better than not understanding eh?

And I'll tell ya what: I'm pretty sure the other thread is really really close to what you need. Probably just adding another widget instead of replacing one, but it's hard to be sure without actually seeing what you want.

I apologize, I'm pretty new to b2evolution (as you can probably tell from my noob posts :) )

A link to my site is: http://www.perforateartery.com/

What I'm wanting to do is add a link at the top of the page, maybe next to Home, Contact, Log In or in another area near the top of the page for a forum I have on the site, located at: http://www.perforateartery.com/forum

I tried adding a widget as per the other thread suggested, but either it's not what I need or I did something terribly wrong. But I followed the instructions exactly.

Well a Free HTML widget really should do the job for you. Gotta keep a few things in mind about it, and what you put in it sorta changes depending on exactly which container you put it in, but it ought to work so let's try.

I'm pretty sure the container with "home contact login" is always a UL, so everything in it needs to be an LI. b2evo takes care of that for some stuff, but your free html widget it doesn't know about. So you gotta do it. Anyway first make sure you're clicking "add widget" for the correct container because each container gets whatever widget you want. I don't know the name off the top of my head. Probably "Page top"? On the right side of Page top click "Add widget" then click "Free HTML". It'll give you a text area to put your stuff in so add this to that:

<li><a href="http://www.perforateartery.com/forum" title="forum">FORUM LINK</a></li>

If that looks totally screwed up it might be because of who knows, but at the very least you should have FORUM LINK clickable somewhere on your page. But if it is screwed up try editing that widget (click it's name in the widget list) to be only this:

<a href="http://www.perforateartery.com/forum" title="forum">FORUM LINK</a>

You might decide "that's not where I want it after all" so delete it and do the same in a different container. Some containers will always give you the LI bits, others won't. All depends on what's coded in the skin is the thing.

Oh and when you go to Blog settings you have to select the right blog before you select the Widgets subtab. Dunno why I just thought of that, but it would suck to do it all right on the wrong blog then wonder why it's not doing anything for you.

Eventually it'll all make sense. Just getting from here to there that can be frustrating...