thisisedie

Remove <?php the_content(); ?> (or something similar) from the index.php of your theme.

When you say links do you mean the blogroll or the list of pages?

In your stylesheet, change

#wrapper {
margin: 0px 50px 100px 100px;
width: 720px;
text-align: left;
padding: 0px;
}

to

#wrapper {
margin:0 auto;
width: 720px;
text-align: left;
padding: 0px;
}

CSS stands for cascading style sheets. Basically — HTML, PHP, ASP and whatever else files might be used are what make up a site. CSS puts everything together and makes it pretty. You can do just about everything with CSS from color choices to aligning. Google “beginning CSS” and you’ll find lots of tutorials to help you get started 🙂

Why in the world would I have a copy of the theme?

You should have a backup of your custom themes so this type of thing doesn’t happen. I would have thought that would be obvious what with the troubles you had but apparently it wasn’t. If you’d had a backup you could have just upgraded and reuploaded your custom theme and all would have been well. I have a backup of my entire site on my computer. I’m not even sure how you couldn’t have a copy of your theme? Unless you edit though the editor in admin? I edit everything on my comp and upload it.

Also, the upgrader only upgrades the standard WP files. This means that if you have a theme in your themes folder called “mytheme” it isn’t touched when you upgrade. The theme called “default” is overwritten however, because it’s a standard WP theme. So you should rename your custom themes. As a website owner it’s your job to learn these things — not blame the software when things go wrong. That’s a little like suing Mcdonalds because they didn’t tell you hot coffee might burn you. I have been using WordPress for YEARS without any problems I didn’t create myself. It’s not the FREE software that’s at fault… it’s YOU.

And? If you don’t like the auto updater, don’t use it. Do it manually. It’s just a matter of deleting and uploading files.