Theme development

I have selected that the 'Recent Blog Posts' block be shown in the 'sidebar_left' region. However it only shows the following:

Recent blog posts

* First Blog St Davids

more

The problem is that I would like to show the first sentence or two of the post but I have no idea how to achieve this so my sidebar_left would look something like the example below:

Recent blog posts

I've written the following code for mysite...But i am unable to display one image as horizontal menu item...How can I solve this problem

print $language " xml:lang=" print $language ">

print $head_title

print $head
print $styles
print $scripts

if($astrabase_header_repeat) {
print($astrabase_header_repeat) " alt=" print t('Home') " border="0" />
}

/*if($astrabase_button_profile) { } */ if ($logo) : print($logo) " alt=" print t('Home') " border="0" /> endif;

In my front page there is a news and events section. How can i trim the text content so that not all of the news and events content will be seen in the front page because i want to have this "read more" link that brings you to the exact content.

Thanks

I'm not a theme developer, but this forum area fits better than the other choices. I am trying to use a theme called Aberdeen in three columns. I can get this to work, sort of, on pages other than the front page, but nowhere else. We did add a new logo to the header, but I adjusted the height of the header. I am not using any settings in the Front Page module. The site is http://catesol2008.org

I am using the garland theme and have tried many different locations for the link_page code to go into. But I keep gettings errors. The code looks different than the above. Can anybody spot where I should insert the code? I'm onling posting part of the template file as it is quite large.

This is working code posted on: http://drupal.org/node/117123

function _phptemplate_variables($hook, $vars) {
  // Load the node region only if we're not in a teaser view.
  if ($hook == 'node' && !$vars['teaser']) {
    // Load region content assigned via blocks.
    foreach (array('inline1') as $region) {
          $vars[$region] = theme('blocks', $region);
    }
    }
  if ($hook == 'page') {
        $vars['head_title'] = page_title_page_get_title();
  }
  return $vars;
}

************

This is my un altered code:

/**
* Override or insert PHPTemplate variables into the templates.
*/
function _phptemplate_variables($hook, $vars) {
if ($hook == 'page') {

if ($secondary = menu_secondary_local_tasks()) {
$output = '';
$output .= "

\n". $secondary ."

\n";
$vars['tabs2'] = $output;
}

// Hook into color.module
if (module_exists('color')) {
_color_page_alter($vars);
}
return $vars;
}
return array();
}

Has any other Garland user been able to incorporate the Page Title Module into this php, if so, can you share how?

I'm creating a theme using zen as a template. I'm trying to customize tabs.gif to change the look of the primary links. I replaced the square rectangles with the rounded rectangle I wish to use for the design. I matched the positioning and size of the original tabs.gif. However, the background is blue instead of white so that it blends with the rest of the page.

I uploaded the file but the images are not being cropped correctly. is there some thing i'm missing? what function would I override to fix this? Then zen template does not seem to contain any code specific to tabs.gif