Firstly rename the xtemplate.xtmpl file to original.xtmpl so that the theme is no longer a xtemplate theme.

Creating page.tpl.php

   1. copy original.xtmpl to page.tpl.php
   2. Remove the node, comment, box, and block sections. In the place of these sections add the following code
      <?php echo $comment ?>
   3. Change all the "{" characters to "<?php print $"
   4. Change all the "}" characters to "; ?>"
   5. Change the "$footer" to "$closure"
   6. Change "$message" to "$messages"
   7. As the primary and secondary links in phptemplate are arrays you will need to change them from "echo $primary_links;" to "echo theme('links', $primary_links);". Also the same needs to be done for secondary links.
   8. In the blocks section we need to change the $block to either $sidebar_left or $sidebar_right depending on which side of the content it is on.

Creating node.tpl.php

   1. Copy the node section from the original.xtmpl to a new file node.tpl.php
   2. As before change all the "{" and "}" characters to "<?php print $" and "; ?>" respectively.
   3. change $link to $node_url.
   4. Change "$taxonomy" to "$terms"
   5. Change "print $sticky;" to "if ($sticky) { print " sticky"; }"
   6. Change "print $picture;" to "if ($picture) { print $picture; }"

Creating comment.tpl.php

   1. Copy the comment section from the original.xtmpl to a new file comment.tpl.php
   2. As before change all the "{" and "}" characters to "<?php print $" and "; ?>" respectively.
   3. Change "print $picture;" to "if ($picture) { print $picture; }"

Also just to be clean, you may want to change the displaying of the new so it will only show when the $new != ''

Create block.tpl.php

   1. Copy the block section from the original.xtmpl to a new file block.tpl.php
   2. As before change all the "{" and "}" characters to "<?php print $block->" and "; ?>" respectively.
   3. Then change the $block->title to $block->subject.

Create box.tpl.php

   1. Copy the box section from the original.xtmpl to a new file box.tpl.php
   2. As before change all the "{" and "}" characters to "<?php print $" and "; ?>" respectively.