Is it possible to download an archive of previous messages? It would save some time, rather than trawling the past online.

You mean for the message board? or the mail list? This board has only been open a couple months, all the posts are here, it's less than a 150 threads total; not much to browse through. I suppose if you wanted to browse the whole board offline or the mail list offline, you could just download the whole thing with one of those site sucker programs. Check for one at download.com.