Drupal 7.x

I hate to ask such a no0b question. I think I am thinking of this the wrong way here, but I've created a testing site that I've been banging on Drupal for a week now and I think I understand it a bit to begin with template design/dev. One thing that really messed me up is how Drupal handles articles vs pages. Here is my question:

Hello,

I have a small problem while developing my theme.
I have an active link within a drupal menu:

I don't know if this is a module question or a theme question but I'd like to have the user block that looks like this:
http://www.scic.com/eddie/drupal_login_block_1.png

look like this:
http://www.scic.com/eddie/drupal_login_block_2.png

Is there anyway possible to add some form of threaded discussion on user profiles in drupal 7? Like comments or something?

I would like to use the user-profile.tpl.php and add something like this...

Hi
I m having great problem with my drupal 7.x site.
anything related to email giving me this error message "Error message
Unable to send e-mail. Contact the site administrator if the problem persists." for example user registration, password recovery etc. But it work well in 6.x. Also I have copied mail.inc from include folder 6.x to 7.x. It works fine.
is there any better solution? rather than replacing mail.inc file from older version?

I've worked on several SQL projects before & understand the basics & the Views 'and/or' concept in Filter Criteria in 7.x-3.0-rc1. However, I admit to being totally flummoxed after trying numerous times to get Views to filter my particular scenario correctly: