Followers, Activity, Notifications not working in AskBug

Really like the theme, but having some trouble making it all work. Specifically, I can’t seem to get the follow feature to work. I was using buddypress before, so some of the profiles have followers. It says I have followed someone, but nothing is updated. I saw on another thread something about data bases. Is that through php myadmin? Kind of new to that – could you explain a little more. Thank You!