[ghoulash]

ISSUE NOW RESOLVED. I have reinstalled bbPress, this time using only a pure text editor (TextWrangler) and a different FTP client. Before I was using Dreamweaver as my interface, and you would think, after years of web work and experience with DW’s thug-like behavior with relative paths, that I would have known better.

By the way, upon reinstalling without using DW, I did not have the initial reverse-slash issue. In other words, I am not having to use the path-to-url plugin, with or without its subsequent tweak.

By the way 2: I know this would be a “duh” comment for many, but just in case it helps someone avoid the problems I had: When running bb-admin/install.php, in the field where it calls for your web site, do not enter a trailing slash. I tend to add one out of habit, and I think that was the cause of some of my earlier problems.