Fiddling with making the text for author and user comments appear white, and I have a still-limited knowledge of HTML. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

<font face="arial" color="white" size="2">

That will make text white, if you put it anywhere above both the author's notes and comments tags. You can change the font and size if you want as well.

Be sure to close it off with

</font>

at the bottom of the page, after the author's notes and comments tags.