I am an experienced web developer, but i've managed to make it 10 years until today without developing for or looking into drupal. A few hours into it and I am not finding the documentation for what seem like the most basic of theming questions.
I'm sure this has been asked and answered 100 times, but I have read the theming guide many times and read through the forums....
1. specify your theme's options/settings in your theme's .info file.... ok, fine!
regions[dash] = Top dashbar section
regions[header] = Header
regions[content] = Main content area
regions[search] = Search sidebar
regions[sidebar] = Right sidebar
regions[footer] = Footer
2. copy into my theme directory html.tpl.php (highest level template to override) and page.tpl.php, and customize them.... ok done, awesome.
referencing a different theme's page.tpl.php, i add " print render($page['content']);
" to my main content area of my layout.
I add my custom css file.
i can already preview my drupal site and it looks more or less like the static html theme i was starting with, with dynamic drupal entries being loaded into the area i defined as "content", so thats promising.