Blog design issues with structure

Hello,

Firstly, thank you for taking the time to read this request.

I have setup a wordpress blog, but I have absolutely no experience in PHP, HTML,CSS etc… I think I badly messed up the template I used (Default) and basically I would really appreciate if you could just visit the blog and let me know in your opinion what you think is wrong with the structure (appeal wise) and some pointers/tips that I could use to fix it.

Basically, my blog is intended to be some sort of support group going into retirement, and also a forum where one could exchange or discuss ideas/experiences.
If you visit the blog, you’ll see that I have used posts and pages. I tried posts only but for some reason, I had problems with this. I hacked the code and I think I messed it up.

Issue 1:

I would have like to use “tabs” instead of links on the right panel, but I am not too sure about how to do it. When I tried to modify the code, it broke, so I left it.

Issue 2:

I wish I could “shrink” the comments with a …. more
… link to read the whole story instead of having it entirely shown on the page as it is now. This will grow to impractical depth…

Maybe I should change the Theme ?… I searched wordpress but couldn’t find something that would work and I don’t want to lose the content I have now…

Thank you all for your advice.

Boris.