I'm also a newbie so might be mistaken as to your scenario, but I had a similar experience... I was trying to mine scrypt based coins using a sha256 setup when i first started - it looked liked guiminer was doing the work, but nothing was showing on the pool dashboard.

Could that be the problem?

...Happy New Year! 

Been reading these forums for some weeks now, finally registered and noticed the newbie rule... ah well.

Trying to decide if mining is economical for me... such a shame I can't hide the hardware in my server cabs at work...