Newbie wanting to add more to splash page

For the first part, you will need to change the template so that you can display widgets on the front page. The easiest way I think would be to add a sidebar, or whatever is containing that widget from second link. It will be very hard if you’re not familiar with coding and styling because it will require a lot of work to get dimensions right. Getting a facebook like button will be pretty easy, because you can open the homepage template and simply paste in the facebook like button where you want it. You can even look for social bookmarking plugins which have template code you can paste in, this will give you a broader range of bookmarking displays.