Test-user feedback is trickling in; I’m starting to address some of the lower-hanging fruit.
Thanks to classmate Matt who pointed out that the (then-current) menu displayed a “Register / Log in” link whether or not the user was logged in. Taking that a little further, there was also a “Profile” link that really only should be available to registered and logged in users. (I guess that is redundant — for this site a user cannot be logged in without having registered first!)
Anywho, the previous header menu was consistent, regardless of the login status of the user:

In the above scenario, what would happen if a logged-out user selected the Profile link? I had rigged the page so that they’d get a friendly message (with an illustration) saying they’d need to register or log in to see their profile.
I remember having solved the Log in / Log out menu item for my test site, but I couldn’t remember what I did to fix it — I checked the settings of the test site but found no activated plugins that would be solving this for me, so I must have been able to fix things without a plug-in. But how????
After a short search for online help, I found the video below to be very helpful. The first part explains what I had already done in the test site; the second part explains how to toggle the appearance of the Profile link based on user status. For that second part, though, I’d need the “Nav Menu Roles” plug-in, or a similar plug-in (there are actually several out there.)
So, I guess the ability to toggle the Log in links is actually offered within the LearnDash plug-in because it required a LearnDash shortcode, so I really cannot say I didn’t need the help of a plug-in to do it.
After successfully updating the header menu, I updated the footer menu similarly.
Below, the latest headers for non-logged in users, and logged-in users.


My little avatar in the top right floats back into the WP admin menu strip when the browser window is widened.
OK – what should I fix next?? Hmm.