Magento

At the end of this post is a link to an image of what I want a global template to do
I’m going to need lots of help to make it happen

If anyone can offer guidance, it would be greatly appreciated

my biggest concerns are putting everything into 1 global css file, making the left navigation work, and calling things in the middle. The rest is cake.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3148/2316806301_cfb360557d_o.jpg

(i’ve read the design guide, and it didn’t help much, if at all, so please don’t just point me in its direction)

what do you mean it didnt help at all? as in you couldn’t comprehend it or the stuff you’re trying to do somehow isn’t covered by it? from a quick glance at what you’re trying to do, it should most definitely be covered by the design guide.

a few ways the design guide didnt help:
-its talking about templates, layouts, styles. all i want is 1 file that defines everything.
-then it says whenever you need something, this is how you load it. that doesn’t tell me where the thing to load is, and the template path hint only shows what is currently in the theme, not a complete list. i have no clue where some stuff is or what links to what, what images are loaded, what item is using which style, where that stylesheet is, etc. for example, if you want to change the font style that says “newsletter,” i have no clue where to find how to change that. if there is a background image in one of the table cells, where did it come from / what is its name?
-everything seems to be relative to their default layouts of 1-3 columns, none of which work as i want (the example walkthrough shows how to move something from right to left, which is fine, if you don’t want it at the bottom)