Theme development

I am in the process of creating my own theme[based on default theme] and I have an image that is set as the background of the left-sidebar. I want that image to span into the center "content" column but am having no success. The reason I need this is that you can see the width is 200px but the problem is if someone is using a resolution of 800x600 that is 1/3 of the screen so the center and right sidebar get squeezed down.

I modified a portion of my style.css file to look like this:

#sidebar-left {
  background-color: #fffffff;
  background: url("guitar.jpg") no-repeat;
  width: 200px;
  /* padding in px not ex because IE messes up 100% width tables otherwise */
  height: 97em;
  padding-left: 100px;
  vertical-align: top;
}

#sidebar-right {
  background-color: #ddd;
  width: 85px;
  /* padding in px not ex because IE messes up 100% width tables otherwise */
  padding: 10px;
  vertical-align: top;
}

and my page.tpl.php looks like this:

}

I want to design my site in a phptemplate and have uploaded the phptemplate engine files to engine/phptemplate but is there anything else I need to do in order to make sure it works?

Also, is there any theme development kit available for phptemplate

Thanks

I have just uploaded exactly the same theme (bonsai from afterdeathgraphics.com) to two different sites, both running 4.7 (but one on apache and one on IIS if that's relevant). Both sites have items in the Primary links which will appear as a block if switched on. However the theme has the following block of code :

Hi, I've been messing around in the style.css files of bluemarine and I could change most of the things I need but there are some stuffs I really can't find:

I need to change the color of the text in the left menu to something like : everything (links) is grey, the link which I'm currently visiting must be black (ie if the current page is home then the link "home" must be black and not grey) and when I hover it must be pink. Visited links should return to their original state : grey.

I also need the links in the posts to be pink.

Hope this is the appropriate place for this post.

I would like to be able to have a random sentence pulled from a list instead of the hard wired site slogan. I realize this is kind of silly and may effect search engine results but think that it would fit with the site I am putting together. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

I am pretty sure I will be using a modified bluemarine template and for sure will be using the PHPTemplate engine if that information helps.

Thanks

I'm currently using Blue Marine on my site. I like the overall set-up but have a problem with the way the pages are turning out. Most indent the first line in the first paragraph only. I can't change it so I've tried to indent any other paragraphs within the text & it won't let me do that either. How can I fix this? The other theme I was using didn't have this problem but I didn't like the overall set-up. I'm sure it's something as simple as changing a little php code but I don't know what/where/etc.

* Please Note: Very little PHP experience.