In both cases, the importance of backlinks is huge. If you don’t have links you wont have results. For The Daily Student consider adding more to your title, you can put in about 70 characters into your title and still have the whole thing be indexed. Which keywords you can get into weighs heavily on your title tag. If you haven’t researched what keywords are popular check out the overture keyword selector (Google it). It will show you monthly keywords that get searched, etc...
Adjust your title tag, meta tags, and keyword density content on your site (including alt tags, links, bolds, and H1-H3 tags) Google loves it if your keywords are in an <H#1-3> tag.
Once you get your site setup for your keywords create a links page (You can use MyLinking to get yourself setup with that:
http://www.MyLinking.com) Make sure not to allow more then 25 outgoing links on each links page. I would set 20 just to be sure so you can have ads and such later on.
Once you setup your links page start submitting to free directories... Here is a good start:
http://www.info-sales.co.uk/directory_A.htm
Start exchanging links with relevant traffic sites. Don’t waste your time linking with non relevant sites, its much more beneficial to hit places that are related to you. (Google will be much happier, and give you better results).
MAKE SURE to put keywords in your anchor text (title) of your links. When using MyLinking supply 3-5 different required HTML codes, and list them randomly. (make sure these codes have your dif anchor text links). If you really want to get technical, pick a keyword that is required on the link partners site, this will help filter out the non related link partners, you can of course set it to auto add, and then review it later, it will notify you if a questionable link partner has been added, etc...
If you added RateMyMug to Google when you registered the domain you should be either out of the sandbox or coming out very soon... weeks.. Avg time is sandbox is 6 months.
THEDAILYSTUDENT.COM - Welcome to the sandbox, Unless you can get a high PR site to link to you, and by high I mean 7+, your in the box. For at least another 3 months. This just means your not gonna pull much traffic from Google. I would recommend going for MSN/Yahoo while your boxed in Google, and when you come out, you should start seeing Google friendly traffic.
Sandbox simply means Google is gonna cripple your page rank (not visible page rank, but actual page rank). You could have a PR6 site and still be in sandbox, etc...
So, here is my suggestion for both sites: figure out your target keywords, (don’t aim too high right away). Modify your sites to have these keywords (don't over do it, if it looks like spam then SE will penalize you). Check competitors to see avg amounts of keyword instances. Once you get keywords added, create a links page, if you don’t have a link manager use MyLinking.com, its free. Start submitting to the directories. Don’t add more then 20 links per page, if you get to 20, create a new links page and start it over...
If you can think of some interesting articles that would appeal to your target traffic write some up and submit those... (lots of article submission places, like ezines, etc..)
The Daily Student: I would put a little more descriptive information on the page, I'm not sure what your forum is about. I'm guessing something to do with school, is it college stuff, what is being discusses. Find a niche if you don’t have one already and make a title somewhere on there to describe it. (e.x. Discussions about .. . .. . )
Good luck...
-UrbelT
Great info 
