Hello
about question 1,
the first ## items are the "leading items" that are placed in a single column,
... it is the "leading" parameter of the template parameters at bottom right of category edit form
e.g. if you
display 20 items in your page and you set
leading TEMPLATE parameter to 4
then the
first 4 will be show with a single column, then the remaining 16 will be placed into columns
about question 2,
this FAQ article answers your question about
why item URLs are the way they are and how to change some of them:
Creating shorter/nicer SEF urls and structure of item URLs
NOTE 1:
e.g. about '/item/',
the current menu is a category menu item and we want to tell FLEXIcontent to show an item in this category,
... so we use '/item/' ...
2 segments after menu alias, which means ITEM VIEW
... FLEXIcontent is trying to make a good job taking into account that it does not use DB table to store url mappings ... which is done by SEF components but it can have other problems ...
NOTE 2:
e.g. if we remove '/item/' then the part after menu-alias will be
1-length-segment, which means category view, e.g. a subcategory inside the current category ...,
NOTE 3:
this question is often asked, so the above FAQ article is a slightly technical but it answers what is happening with the item URLs !!
NOTE 4:
a more general article that also gives Joomla knowledge about SEF urls:
Structure of FLEXIcontent SEF URLs
Regards