Hi @a_5mith , thanks for your help. I went to mynodebb/api as you suggested. Below is what I see after running it though jsonlint.org...
{
"categories": [
{
"cid": "1",
"name": "Announcements",
"description": "Announcements regarding our community",
"icon": "fa-bullhorn",
"bgColor": "#0059B2",
"color": "#fff",
"slug": "1/announcements",
"topic_count": "0",
"post_count": "0",
"disabled": false,
"order": "1",
"link": "",
"numRecentReplies": "4",
"class": "col-md-3 col-xs-6",
"imageClass": "auto",
"backgroundImage": "",
"unread-class": "",
"posts": []
},
{
"cid": "3",
"name": "Desktop Support Questions",
"description": "Ask your Desktop Support questions here!",
"icon": "fa-github",
"bgColor": "#0059B2",
"color": "#fff",
"slug": "3/desktop-support-questions",
"topic_count": "1",
"post_count": "1",
"disabled": false,
"order": "3",
"link": "",
"numRecentReplies": "4",
"class": "col-md-3 col-xs-6",
"imageClass": "auto",
"backgroundImage": "",
"unread-class": "unread",
"posts": [
{
"pid": "1",
"tid": "1",
"content": "<p>this is a test</p>\n",
"uid": "0",
"timestamp": "1410446411413",
"deleted": "0",
"index": 1,
"topic": {
"tid": "1",
"title": "test",
"cid": "3",
"slug": "1/test",
"deleted": "0"
},
"category": {
"cid": "3",
"name": "Desktop Support Questions",
"icon": "fa-github",
"slug": "3/desktop-support-questions"
},
"relativeTime": "2014-09-11T14:40:11.413Z"
}
]
},
"loggedIn": false
}
Also, I did an inspect on the broken "guest" image on the logged out site, and compared to the logged in. There was a difference. The logged out code says
<img src="{categories.posts.user.picture}" title..." whereas the logged in code related to the guest pic says...
<img src="https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e? size =128&default=identicon&rating=pg" alt="Guest" class="profile-image user-img" title data-original title="Guest">
See screeenshots. Does this give any clue to what's going on with the broken "Guest" pics? Thanks again!

