[@mauryg Participant 12 years, 10 months ago]

Part of the problem resolved…my Christmas present to myself.
The problem was in the ‘psychology’ of the site.
Since only registered members can access the ‘all-residents’ group and forums, there was no need for that group to be ‘private’. Once I made the GROUP ‘public’ then the regular sitename/forums link worked perfectly, but the groups and forums were still NOT visible to the non-logged-in public. Since I don’t use the ‘friending’ feature and only designated moderators can form groups, I don’t think it is necessary to have the ‘all-residents’ GROUP and the all-residents FORUM is simply ‘site-wide’.
Still leaves the questions of formatting the forum postings and threading (indenting) the replies.