So, the only item I could find that matched the CFS instructions was the customIndex - there were no similiar blocks for Stats, Topics, Profiles, Posts, etc.
I moved that over, and the problem has persisted (and actually gotten worse - now ALL my sub-forums are invisible, description or not).
Switching over to the HTML template has also caused a new issue. Screen shot below - the template has added 'forums', 'topics', 'replies', and 'last post information' headers that, because of the structure of the custom layout, are both redundant and in the wrong place.
I think I'm just going to put things back the way they were and deal with not having a description in that forum. I don't want to keep messing things up.
Thanks for trying!
This post has been edited by thenoisyflower: Apr 19 2018, 12:37 PM