Lee,
The funky color-coding is likely due to the annoying "Skimlinks" feature of the site, that seems to turn random words and phrases in posts into hyper-links to, basically, spam and junk web-sites. If you go to your profile->Settings->General settings, all the way at the bottom, you'll find the SkimLinks section. Un-check "Skimlinks enabled".
Regards,
Ray L.