me love you long time
ok, i had already replaced the code from the original welcome.tpl and that didn't solve the problem.
i think wherever i deleted the code, it had something to do with the Special Offers add-on. I didn't like that when active, it displayed text notifying customers about the offers on the home page. So I deleted it AND the general welcome.
sooooooooooo, to make things easier on myself (i hope), i put {$lng.txt_welcome} at the end of the welcome.tpl file. hopefully that solves it.
THANX!