Post installation

So I've got my site (http://www.coloradobeernews.com/drupal) looking like I want it to look. I've got the site centered, with a background image that makes shadows on the sides. However, on some versions of IE on Windows, the background image doesn't appear and the site is not centered.
Here's the relevant lines of CSS:

I've heard over and over again, that if you place your content towards the top of your page, the result can be better search engine rankings.

My questions is: How would one go about moving the content portion of their pages, above the rest of the page items (sidebar blocks, breacrumbs, etc).

Which files should I specifically be looking at here; page.tpl.php, template.tpl.php, and/or node.tpl.php?

Does anyone have a step by step in order to accomplish this?

Thanks,
-=Vince

You know how drupal has all those cool drop downlinks to form boxes and other modular content when you create a new page? Just by clicking a link you can drop down content you need or shrink content you don't.

How can I make this available for my own content? Say I have a calender and I want anonymous users to be able to hide the calender at will.

I am planning a site where I would like to use some taxonomies to set some flags such as "Is Lead Story" or "Is Featured Story." Then I can use Views.module to create various blocks for lead or featured stories, including "more" buttons to see older ones.

These flags will only be set by people with an "editor" role, not ordinary users.

How do I install a navigation menu similar to the one at the top of this page (Support | Handbooks | Forum | Downloads | etc). I've been scouring the various modules but as I'm new to this I'm getting rather confused.

I also like the menu on the Modules page - Browse By name | Category | Date etc - How is this achieved?

I'd like to incorporate the BBCode toolbar into our site, but the readme says it only works with IE and Firefox. Has anyone come up with a fix to get it working with Safari?

Thanks!