csleh

Great answer above.

Re: dreamweaver:
I do all my initial designing in dreamweaver mostly in code view. It’s easy to work out all the html/css issues. Get a feel for “header” “body” “sidebar” and “footer” so divs can be placed in logical spots.

When the design is ready I edit the default theme using my css and putting html in the appropriate php files. Then the php code is put in the right spots to call content, make the navigation, etc.

Make sure to bookmark helpful pages when looking for wordpress help — chances are you’ll want to go back again!

Somewhere else in the stylesheet is code with a width, probably something like ‘width:988px’
You can change this, but realize other things might get screwed up in the process.

Read up on css and practice — not on your live blog! — making changes to get the width how you like. Percentages and em sizes (fluid and elastic layouts) might suit.

Keep in mind that no matter what you do, you do not have final control over the look of your site. The viewer does. Absolutely no guarantees in web design.

For practicing use Firefox and download the developers plugin. It lets you edit css styles on the fly, and you can copy and save to update the real style sheet when you are ready.

If this is a Page — super easy. Make a new template, and in the Edit Page screen scroll down and select that page template. There’s some code at the top of the php file needed to make a template:
<?php
/*
Template Name: whatever
*/
?>
then add the code you want from the regular page, making a <div> that is big enough, and not pulling in the menu area.

If this is a post, I think you need conditional code to use the new <div> instead of the default from the rest of the site. You could also try a category template and use the “force category template” but this would affect all of your site.

Personally I’d extend to the right and not the left. There’s more real estate that direction.

This page will help for the listing issue:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/wp_list_categories

If you look at your actual code:

<!--catigory navigation-->
  <div id="cat-nav">
  <ul>
  <li class="all"><a href="http://new.coolmac.org/" title="All">All</a></li>
  <li>	<li class="cat-item cat-item-1"><a href="http://new.coolmac.org/archives/category/uncategorized/" title="View all posts filed under CoolMac News">CoolMac News</a>
</li><li class="cat-item cat-item-6"><a href="http://new.coolmac.org/archives/category/meeting-minutes/" title="View all posts filed under Meeting Minutes">Meeting Minutes</a>
</li><li class="cat-item cat-item-5"><a href="http://new.coolmac.org/archives/category/upcoming-events/" title="View all posts filed under Upcoming Events">Upcoming Events</a>
</li>
</li>
  </ul>
  </div>
  <!--catigory navigation-->
	<ul id="nav">
	 	</ul>

you’ll see the tags are all messed up. Nested bullets here aren’t picking up the styling.

To remove the number you’ll need to edit the template for the file. But you must have done that already, I don’t see a number of posts on the site.

Where you have:

<div id="pages">
<ul>
      <?php wp_list_pages('depth=1&title_li=' ); ?>
    </ul>
</div>

add a line like this:

<div id="pages">
<ul>
      <?php wp_list_pages('depth=1&title_li=' ); ?>
      <li><a href="linktobb.html">link text</a></li>
    </ul>
</div>