I had the template changes right, but the problem (or one of them) was that the photopost.inc.php file never had a reference to database user or password.
I added this:
mysql_connect ("localhost", "my_db_username", "my_password");
to that file and got it to start to work.... it now shows "featured photos" but errors out after that:
Warning: mysql_fetch_row(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/xxx/public_html/folder/templates/default/ubbt_photopost.tmpl on line 121
Warning: mysql_free_result(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/xxx/public_html/folder/templates/default/ubbt_photopost.tmpl on line 132
Still trying to figure it out.