Static Front Page Issues

Hello,

first and foremost, I apologize if this is silly or in the wrong area. I am extremely new to WordPress. To say I am feeling overwhelmed is a bit of an understatement.

I was referred to WordPress by a few associates who claimed it greatly simplifies content management and news feeds/blogs, because I was after a news feed for my websites homepage. I run a website for a band, which was basically complete until the Godaddy installation of WordPress wiped it from my host completely (no worries, I have the files somewhere). I’ve always programmed in HTML/CSS, and until this point I’ve never programmed or needed to program a news feed on a page; php is totally foreign to me, so I’m struggling a bit adapting.

The use of templates is also pretty foreign to me, which I believe is where my problem is.

I’ve created a new page for the news feed/blog itself, and a new static front page using the creator in the Dashboard. I’ve copied the HTML from the front page I’ve designed (made sure the HTML tab was selected in the creator) into the creator, and saved, and set things appropriately in the settings. However, when I go to the website, what displays is a page that looks identical to the default in terms of the template, and does not display any of my frames, instead showing the first bit of HTML coding in the content area of the template.

You can see what I mean HERE.

I’m not looking to include a template whatsoever on this front page. The main reason for this being that the band has a music player that should be a constant at the top of the page. It is set inside a frame, with the content of the website being in another frame below, with the pages to be loaded in that frame.

It can be seen HERE.

Despite adding this HTML static front page in the Dashboard, with the lower frame directing to my normal news feed page, the code is basically ignored, instead displaying the first bit of HTML in the content area of the WordPress template as I had said before.

How do I remedy this?

I’m also extremely interested in learning how to use my own graphics in the template, so I can get the site similar to what it was, just with the added news feed/blog.

Thank you very much in advance for any help.
Travis