Sidebar positioning trouble

So I dug through some old posts and I think I figured out the solution:

You have to make a table where all your main content sits in one column and the rest sits in another:

Go to your Main Index Template and put your narrow column, navigation, etc (everything up to the sidebar.php) in one column, and then put the sidebar in the next column. You want to start the table after your header and end it before your footer. Does that make sense?

Here’s my code markup if it helps:

<?php get_header(); ?><table align=”center” cellspacing=”0″ cellpadding=”40″>
<tr>
<td><span id=”content” class=”narrowcolumn”><?php if (have_posts()) : ?><?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?><span class=”post” id=”post-<?php the_ID(); ?>”><br><h2>” rel=”bookmark” title=”<?php the_title(); ?>”><?php the_title(); ?></h2><small><?php the_time(‘j F Y’) ?></small>

<div class=”entry”>
<?php the_content(‘read the rest of this entry »’); ?>
</div>

<p class=”postmetadata”><div class=”category”>posted in <?php the_category(‘, ‘); ?> | <?php comments_popup_link(‘no comments’, ‘1 comment’, ‘% comments’); ?><br></p>
</span>

<?php endwhile; ?>

<div class=”navigation”>
<div class=”alignleft”><?php next_posts_link(‘« previous entries’) ?></div>
<div class=”alignright”><?php previous_posts_link(‘next entries »’) ?></div>
</div>

<?php else : ?>

<h2 class=”center”>not found</h2>
<p class=”center”>sorry, but you are looking for something that isn’t here.</p>
<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . “/searchform.php”); ?>

<?php endif; ?>

</span>
</td>
<td valign=”top”>
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<?php get_footer(); ?>

Hope that helps!!!