author links problem – comments about WordPress site

I’ve only been using WordPress for a few months and my site at https://www.dallasgreenzine.com has two problems with authoring:

(1) when an author name displays with a post, there isn’t an active link appearing on the author’s name

(2) when I added a plugin that made the author’s name an active link, and I clicked on the link, a white window came up instead the author’s info, even though I had created an author.php file based on the info I’ve been reading here at this site.

This is the info that I put in the author.php file.

<?php
if(get_query_var(‘author_name’)) :
$curauth = get_userdatabylogin(get_query_var(‘author_name’));
echo $curauth->nickname;
echo $curauth->description;
else :
$curauth = get_userdata(get_query_var(‘author’));
endif;
?>

I just want it so that someone can click on an author’s name and the author’s profile (as defined under Users) comes up. If the author has decided to keep that info private, then it echoes instead: ‘Sorry, author has private profile.’

Does anyone have a ‘complete’ author.php file that they could post here as a model?

GENERAL COMMENTS ABOUT WORDPRESS SITE…

One of the problems I’m finding with the documentation here at WordPress in general is that there are lots of snippets, and it isn’t always clear what the ‘complete file’ should look like.

This is just a suggestion for the admins at this site, but as someone who has been using this for only a short time, I think it would be really helpful if you could post a files directory that just has multiple examples of template files. For example:

ex1_author.php
ex2_author.php
ex1_sidebar.php
ex2_sidebar.php
etc.

My theme from Cordoba Green didn’t come with that many template files, and I just need some file models to work with. Once I have the ‘big picture’ (the complete model), then your snippets on doing specific tweaking would be much more useful.

Thanks!