Just purchased all plugins and a few questions

I apologize if this is an inappropriate place to post these questions. I have been working with a small group to build a community site and we decided on GD to build the directory component.

Here is our details.
Latest version of GD. Using the multi-rating, multi-location, and custom post type plugin in our testing.

Hosting currently at wpengine.

Our staging site is: http://infoseclist.staging.wpengine.com/solution/

This will take you directly to the GD page. We have already created the custom post type and we think we have that down and we wanted to save our questions until we had a few to submit.

Here they are:
1.) We would like our template sidebars to “wrap” around GD if possible. We will be publishing news and other items. How would we accomplish that and not let GD take 100% of the page width. You can see examples on other pages on the site.
2.) When you go to the following URL, and click what we are assuming is the “sort by rating” dropdown, the text is white so we can not see the words. Please advise
URL: http://infoseclist.staging.wpengine.com/solution/open-source/snort-ids/#reviews
3.) On the detail page, in the middle, there is a “My dashboard location”. Is that necessary to have on these pages? Can it be moved to a page of its own via shortcode or some alternative?
3a.) Also in the “My Dashboard” section there are what looks like to be 2 drop-downs (Add listings / My listings). They don’t seem to appear correctly on the site. So we would rather remove them or move them to a site that would be more appropriate.
4.) Is there a way to set a default filter on the pages. For example (Grid 5) and forcing it so it cant be changed?

Thanks for the great plugin