Themes

As a newbie myself I've been directed to the documentation.

Follow this link: Themes

It will give you the basics. After that you will need to start learning some php and html. One thing that I will say is that you should get notepad++, assuming that you are on a windows box, to edit the .php files. Basically, your best bet would be to start with a theme that is already available and try to modify it. I'm starting with the header.html file myself. I'm trying to add custom logos. For your questions however you would need to create cascading style sheets. This can be done in notepad++ as well. If you try to use word it won't work. Word just adds junk and messes up the code. If you use notepad it is hard to see the logical structures in the code. ++ made things a lot easier for me.