Subscriber Login troubleshooting

I’ve got a couple of issues that I’ve not been able to figure out on my own. I’m using Criteron Theme.

1. After someone registers and are returning, after logging in I would like them to go directly to my site WITHOUT having to go to the DASHBOARD area. At the moment when a returning subscriber logs in they are taken to the dashboard.

2. I’ve tried a number of THEMES so this just isn’t limited to the CRITERON theme. When a subscriber decides to post a comment the ONLY way you can see the comments is if you click on a very small comment link, and then you see how many responses there were and what they are. I would like for all the comments to show up. I have NOT really advertised my site at all yet, and have created a fake subscriber that I can play around with and fix any problems that might arise. So far, I’ve made quite a few changes through editing the .php files.

But I have not been able to figure out how to fix these two items. I’ve made a change and and logged out and logged in with my fake subscriber to see what the changes might look like, or how the changes have affected the site.

Could anyone give me a suggestion? or a fix?