I really love this theme and it's allowing me to customize wordpress to my heart's desire. The one thing I can't get working is the archives. I go to the archives settings and enter the id (2) of a blank page I have created, but when I link to that page, all I get is a blank page. How do I get this to work?

Also, if I want to create 2 different archive pages with 2 different layouts, how would I do that? I want one to be an archive of all posts in the "news" category, and another that is an archive of posts in all other categories.

Did you ever get an answer to this? I can't seem to get archives working either.

What release are you running? I just tested this on 3.4.4 and works fine. Here is what I did
1) created a new page called 'Archive 1' and published it (page ID 86)
2) When to ATO->Create ARCHIVES PAGE and set 'Archives Page ID' to '86'
3) went to the site and the page shows up and shows the archive.

If you want control and/or multiple pages. You should copy the index.php and set it up the way you want

sorry for this absolutely dumb question.
where to i find the page id number?
it doesn't show under 'edit pages' of the wp menu ver:2.8.5

sure it does, just look at the page address in the browser address bar. The place you would type 'http://forum.bytesforall.com' or' 'http://google.com'. When you actually edit the page, you will see a long string and the end will look like '... /wp-admin/page.php?action=edit&post=384' the '384' (in this case) is the page ID