Can Atahualpa do this?
 

It was recommended by juggledad that I put this on a new thread so others can contribute and benefit from the information exchange here so here goes:

ME: "Is there a way to have the home page have a layout like this? http://www.digitaria.com/ basically where there's a top navigation and then a slider and then 3 sections?
Can you make a site like that, yes it's possible. I'd put the menu first, then a widget area and use something like the sliding header widget. Then I'd set the page up to have two left sidebars, the center and not right sidebar and put the widgets in you need for the sidebars and have the center area for the blog."

juggledad: "Can you make a site like that, yes it's possible. I'd put the menu first, then a widget area and use something like the sliding header widget. Then I'd set the page up to have two left sidebars, the center and not right sidebar and put the widgets in you need for the sidebars and have the center area for the blog.

If you have followup questions, please open a thread so others can benefit."

So here are my questions:
1 how can I arrange for the menu to come first?
2 what sliding header widget would you recommend? Ideally I'm looking for something that can play videos and blacks out background. videos are hosted on a video platform already.
3 on the home page how do configure for it to show sections such and for one of the sections to include recent blog posts? also on the blog posts to show gravatars of authors?

Thanks!

Bump - anyone have feedback? I trust that we as a community can work together to learn how to modify this theme? Who wouldn't want a good looking site like that? Thanks in advance.

1. Put %pages or %cats first in the theme options
2. You should go to wordpress.org and seach for sliders and test a few. It's hard to recommend a specific plugin but one you could start with is Smooth Slicder
3. Check the WordPress settings