Theme development

Hi guys,

I am really new to Drupal and I am lost as to how to really trasform the site. I want to make a page that looks like a regular html/css webpage. Right now I develop all my sites using html and css with no tables and I would like to do the same in drupal. For some reason I can't find a clear cut overview on how to really transform the way drupal works. Anyone have any suggestions or sites to look at for help?

Theme Gods:

I am aware of all the CSS opportunities available using regions to make my blocks look different. But this doesn't help with the basic structure of a block.

Here's a challenge. I want the title of Block 1 to be at the top of the block, and I want the title of Block 2 to appear at the bottom of Block 2. Is this possible? Or I want one block to have rounded corners, and another to be squared. To do that right now I need to put CSS in the block-tpl.php (I think).

I'm using 4.7 and have added some block regions for additional sidebars (goal being that I can have 2 left or right sidebars, one of which is only visible to registered users.)

I'm sure my problem is due to the fact that I know very little about working with tables. I added 2 new regions. so I now have sidebar_left, sidebar_left2, sidebar_right, and sidebar_right2.

The problem is the new sidebars are being placed side by side instead of on top of one another. so what i'm ending up with is this:

[sidebar_left][sidebar_left2][content][sidebar_right][sidebar_right2]

where I need to have this:

[sidebar_left] [content] [sidebar_right]
[sidebar_left2] [ ] [sidebar_right2]

Theme is bluemarine, here is how i'm incorrectly displaying the sidebars.

}
if ($sidebar_left2) {


}

I'm using Drupal 4.6 and the Kubrick theme for 4.6.

I am trying to get the headerimg changed to what I created it. Here is the direct code from the style.css in the Kubrick on how to affect and change the headerimg:

/* Images */
	body	 	{ background: url(kubrickbgcolor.jpg); }
	#page		{ background: url(kubrickbg.jpg) repeat-y top; border: none; }
	#header 	{ background: url(kubrickheader.jpg) no-repeat bottom center; }
	#footer 	{ background: url(kubrickfooter.jpg) no-repeat bottom; border: none;}
			
			
/*	Because the template is slightly different, size-wise, with images, this needs to be set here
	If you don't want to use the template's images, you can also delete the following two lines. */
			
	#header 	{ margin: 0 !important; margin: 0 0 0 1px; padding: 1px; height: 198px; width: 758px; }
	#headerimg 	{ margin: 7px 9px 0; height: 192px; width: 740px; } 
/* END IMAGE CSS */
		

/* 	To ease the insertion of a personal header image, I have done it in such a way,
		that you simply drop in an image called 'personalheader.jpg' into your /images/
		directory. Dimensions should be at least 760px x 200px. Anything above that will
		get cropped off of the image. */
		
/*	#headerimg 	{ background: url(personalheader.jpg) no-repeat top;} */	

I have gone through and created a picture called personalheader.jpg. Now, there is no "images" folder in my Drupal install so I was just assuming he meant to use whatever folder you store your images in. I modded the css to look like this:

I have just started looking at the code for themes, a I intend on making my own, and I noticed $header, I checked on my site and it never displays anything for $header, just wondered what the use of it is.

Its on line 28 on the blue marine page.tpl.php file

<td colspan="2"><div><?php print $header ?></div></td>

Cheers Nick