Perch Blog

So, I've finally got Perch blog functioning in a basic way. What I would like to know is how it's possible to format the output of the various functions, for example:

<?php perch_blog_categories(); ?> <?php perch_blog_tags(); ?> <?php perch_blog_date_archive_years(); ?> <?php perch_blog_date_archive_months(); ?>

Currently, the out put is something like:

Archive by Date 2017 (9) Archive by Date 2017 (9) December (1) September (1) May (1) April (2) March (4)

Can this be changes?

Also, the main blog when posting the name of an article always has a bullet point at the start:

• BLOG TESTING POST (the '*' is meant to be the bullet point in this thread...)

Is there a way to prevent this.

Ideally, if someone could point me to some documentation, tutorials and examples that explain in fairly good detail how to format Perch Blog, that'd be great.

Thanks very much.