BuddyPress.org

@hnla

Thanks for the heads up about the plugin; it helps a lot! It’s like having an in-home tutor wagging his finger when I get ahead of myself.
And sometimes it’s the most obvious that escapes me… The thing that completely screwed up the page was what you had noted above:

<php
/*
Template Name: Custom Front Page
*/
?>

Should read: <?php …

Corrected that missing “?” and voilà… the page sorted itself out in IE.
Now it’s a question of fixing a bunch CSS/XHTML “oopses” (mostly improperly formatted tags and such).

Thanks again!