Lets deal with item 1 first.

Looks to me like you have gone to the forum admin > toolbox > data inspector and turned on one of the options to show the data? is this the case? If so – turn them all off and try again. If this IS the case then rest assured you will be the only person to see this behaviour.

Ah, thank you Yellow Swordfish.  I didn’t remember I had done that.  That was, in fact the case on the first problem.

The second problem still exists, however.  The profile link throws me into the back-end instead of going to the Forum Profile page, as set in the settings.  Any idea how to fix that?

what is the url of your profile link?

and what does it point to on forum – profile – options?

do you have link to site?  no caching?

Mr Papa said
what is the url of your profile link?

url/forum/profile

and what does it point to on forum – profile – options?

Under Profiles>Profile Options>>Display Profile Mode I have it set to “Forum Profile Page.”  See screenshot:

When I click on the Profile button in the front-end forum, it sends me to the back-end edit-profile page instead of the front-end Forum Profile.  Is there another setting somewhere else I’m missing, perhaps?

do you have link to site?  no caching?

No caching set up – still in development.  

Link to site is staging1.merchantsrow.biz – it’s on a password protected staging server.  Do you want me to PM you access and/or WP-Admin credentials?

No, that is the wrong section…  how about the one below it? profile entry form mode?

Okay yep – that fixed it.  It was set to WordPress profile form instead of Forum Profile.  I had a feeling it was a settings problem.  There’s a lot of settings in here – easy to miss some.

Thanks for your help!

a lot of settings indeed!   and people keep asking for more… 

glad its resolved and thanks for the update!