To make it easier to manage the talker I suggest you have the following 
layout:

layouts/
helpfiles/
userfiles/

The directory layouts contains a subdirectory for each talker, eg: 
layouts/castle/. Now each subdirectory contains all the files mentioned in
filelayout.txt, except for the helpfiles and userfiles. I suggest you move
the helpfiles to the previous directory (as shown above) and move the
userdata usermail and profiles directories into the new directory called
userfiles. Then you should create 4 symbolic links so that the software
can find the new files: 

ln -s ../../helpfiles helpfiles
ln -s ../../userfiles/userdata userdata
ln -s ../../userfiles/usermail usermail
ln -s ../../userfiles/profiles profiles

This will make the changes transparent to the software, but allow you 
greater control over the layout. Now you can back up the user files and 
the talker layout separately and also you can run multiple talkers using 
the same user files.

Lets say for example you wanted a test port, you create a new talker 
directory (eg. testport) and make up an init_data and all the other files 
for it, then you point the helpfiles and user files directories to the 
ones used by the main talker. Then all your users already exist on the 
test port and you also don't have to have two copies of all the helpfiles!