BBpress Buddy press Help on on Wordpress website

I paid a dev to create a BBpress / WP Forum website for me.
Have some small fixes / questions I need help with.

I believe the dev setup both WP messages (or some messaging plugin) in addition to buddypress.
I need to figure out what is doing which and if we need both?

I messaged myself and can see a notification at the top of the tab, could we have a bell or something that links to whatever is being notified?

I'm a little confused on the difference between the profile on the login/account page and what people can see when they click on another user in the forums. These are 2 seperate profile pages? Some features seem to need some work on the second. Clicking on RSS feed leads to some code, nothing is in the media tab, and the only ways to get there are by clicking on your own profile icon after making a post or going to the messages page of the first.