i was able to get one of the gamebanana levels to work with that method but not the other, whiiich at that point i'm gonna assume the issue is just with that level ^^; however, though, seems custom levels run significantly slower than vanilla levels (which always run perfect for me) on my rubbish computer... not sure that's even a fixable issue though x_x; all this trouble only to subject myself to kaizo catto LOL UPDATE: upgraded the ram in my laptop (went from one 8gb stick to two) and the custom level lag appears to have vanished completely! so, for anyone having trouble with this your computer's ram may be the issue :P
also turns out the chat log thing was me being a goof. i was looking in serverlogs and didn't realize there was a perfectly good chatlogs folder for clientside stuff LOL. public server advertising also works perfectly well now!
thanks for getting back to me!!