bondies

You can insert a contact form using the shortcodes supplied with Woo products –
(http://docs.woothemes.com/document/shortcodes/)

[contact_form]

That is a good question…

I can only guess that is what the force downloads option of the software is for, this way in theory your raw links shouldn’t be exposed, yes even with this option if somebody knows the architecture of the site and has some knowledge of how it works they can easily go searching on their own…

You have two options:

1. You can put a blank file named index.html / or index.php in that directory.
   Some WordPress Plugins and the Core use an index.php file with just

   <?php // Silence is golden.

   in them

2. A more secure way is to put a file named .htaccess in the /wp-content/uploads/ directory consisting of only this line:
   Options -indexes
   This way is all sub-directories of this directory will also get their directory listings turned off at once.

With the .htaccess option instead of giving your users a listing they will get a 403: Forbidden Error

Mike,

Why not select a theme that has the basic layout you want & is something that you like the look of visually. Then create a child theme (http://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes) based on it.

When you say

a banner image which will be a slideshow of images

I am assuming you mean something like jQuery Cycle (http://jquery.malsup.com/cycle/). If that is the case as getting jQuery to work in WordPress is far from impossible but can be tricky I would go for a theme that already has that in it, and then just extend it to have the static top header picture you are looking for.

HTML & CSS wouldn’t be overly difficult, just copy the style.css file and the header.php file from the original theme into a new folder within /wp-content/themes/ and you’ll be set.

#header div, #header nav {
 float: left;
 width: 50%;
}
#slideshow_con {
 clear: both;
}

To get them aligned to the bottom of divs you will need to play either play with the padding of the nav or change the nav to position: relative; and change the top to get the desired results.