yeahjack

i put the </div> where you suggested but it moved the footer and also the sidebar to the far left, however the footer (obviously) should be under the main content, and the sidebar just to the side. i will post my index.php below.

<?php
/**
 * @package WordPress
 * @subpackage Classic_Theme
 */
get_header();
?>

<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

<div class="main1">
<table cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" border="0"><tr><td><div class="date"><h2><?php the_time('d') ?></h2>
<h3><?php the_time('M') ?></h3></div></td>
<td><div class="title"><h1><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h1></div></td></tr></table><div class="content"><?php _e("FILED UNDER:"); ?> <?php the_category(',') ?> , <?php the_author() ?> , <?php comments_popup_link(__('0'), __('1'), __('%')); ?> <?php edit_post_link(__('EDIT')); ?><br />
<?php the_content(__('(more...)')); ?><br /><br />

<?php comments_template(); // Get wp-comments.php template ?></div>

<center><div style="margin-top:-3px;"><img src="/images/cont_bot.png" alt="" border="0" /></div></center>

</div>

<br /><br />

<?php wp_link_pages(); ?>

<?php endwhile; else: ?>
<p><?php _e('Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.'); ?></p>
<?php endif; ?>

<?php posts_nav_link(' — ', __('&laquo; Newer Posts'), __('Older Posts &raquo;')); ?> </div>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

thats what i thought originally, but i cant seem to find anywhere that is missing a </div> or anything. and with fixing my index i have screwed up ALL my other pages ):

ok. so now my site is xhtml validated according to that validating site, but my sidebar is still below the rest of my content. any ideas?

ok. but i meant to have two id=”main” as they are the individual post boxes. i just tried to change the id to style=”body” and i changed the name of the #main bit in my css but it compltetely messed up what it should look like.