Sidebar editing

I’m running WP 1.5 and would like to add a link to a webring and also rotate 1 item daily in my sidebar. When I access the template page on my dashboard, I get the message that I could edit the code if the page was writeable. When I try to FTP an edit so that I can put something on my sidebar, my authentication fails every time.

How can I add webring links and other things (I want to rotate one gif per day to indicate my mood) on my own?

http://www.hollygoheavy.com

Thanks for all your help!