Creating a separate archives.php page

Hey there. I’m pretty new to wordpress, I used it a couple of years ago but very briefly, and didnt understand much of what I was doing.
Now, I’m using it again. I’m more clued up on html and css etc, but I’m no good with php, and so I find this a bit confusing.

First I’ll describe how I’ve set up my site. I’m using my own pages, any my own layouts and skinning method etc. Then I incorporated wordpress into my layout (by adding my headers and footers into the index of my themes headers and footers). So I’m not using any of wordpress’s functions or themes or anything, it is only there in the blog text itself. If it helps the theme I put my headers/footers into is classic theme.

I want to create an archives page. A page that’s separate. Something like a regular page: header, content, footer. And in content, I would normally php include the archives page, but I’ve realised its much more complicated than that in wp.
I’ve searched through forums and someone said to move all the get_archives coding into the page, but I get billions of errors, nothing works for me.

Then I thought if I php included the archives page that’s in the classic theme folder… but that didn’t work either. I am really stuck…

Can anyone please give me some advice or some hints?
Thanks in advance.
Jess.