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The default WP behaviour is that if a single widget is placed in a sidebar all the pre coded sidebar material will disappear. The choice therefore appears to be all or nothing. This is not the case. If you place your hand coded sidebar elements before the if conditional in sidebar.php they will remain there regardless. Thus you can hand code your sidebar in the way you want and you could still use widget functionality for your plugins. Alternatively a lot of people do not realise that the default widget markup can be adjusted by using function.php in the theme. Codex has all the info. But what you want is very doable.

No CSS needed. Its html plus the text needed.
Unless you want to know how to style the caption.?

I can hear the next question coming Otto42:)
In the meantime the get recent comments plugin must have the bare bones of the code needed. There must be a limit number – removing it would give all of them. Add a bit of pagination and whey……

This is a walk in the park. Follow closely for step by step instructions.

1. Build a new template. Copy and paste index.php and save as recents.php.

2. In recents.php delete the loop.

3. In its place put the recent comments tag (consult codex).

4. Create a new page.

5. Associate page with template.

6. Open a beer, sit in your hot tub, chill out.

Then its going to be a cache thing. Force a hard reload. Ctrl +F5 in Windows.

Try to DELETE the old CSS. That will tell you where you are at 🙂

This question is really about the tools being used. Now me – I am Joe Simple. Text Editor and FTP. Thats it.

shadow has given a fabulous example of how WP can be used. He might be too modest to mention that there is a lot of hackery going on:) If the OP is not planning on blogging then why use WP? Textpattern might be a better choice.