Hi everyone! Just joined and this seems like an awesome forum! I'm truly a novice who is just flying by the seat of his pants. I read the stickies and have google searched trying to figure out how to do what I'm trying to do and simply can't figure it out. At this point I'm just frustraed. So.....I'm using Atahualpa 3.4.6 and I'm running the most recent WordPress 2.9. Basically, I just want to change what I guess would be called the background? so that its gray and fading from dark to light. Basically I want it to look like this. I want those grey horizontal columns on the side of the page. Here is what my site currently looks like. As you can see, its just plain white all the way out to the edge of the screen. Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

Well you sure want to jump into more interesting things right off the bat. First of all to make a background color you can just go to ATO>Body, Text, & Links and set a background color. To do what you want requires using a background image like the attached, which fades from grey to white on the sides and use CSS to repeat in from the top to the bottom. Then you need to make sure you set your Atahualpa to a width that conincides with the background image and set the footer to sticky (This is an Atahualpa setting) so that short pages always stick to the bottom otherwise the image will be seen under the footer on short pages and not look so good. I'm throwing quite a bit at you because this can't be summed up easily but maybe you will get the idea.

Click image below to enlarge
Attachment 464

Thanks for the reply lmilesw! Ok, so I went in and changed the background color to grey. But now the center text background is grey as well and I don't want that. I kinda already figured out that I had to put in a jpg like that, but I have no idea how to code it so that it repeats and looks all nice and polished like it does on the website I posted above. I have no idea how to use CSS to repeat in from the top to the bottom. Any help w/ that would be awesome! Thanks again.

Here is a link to a video to show you what else you need to change. After you set the background as you did you now have to set a background for the center column (as see in video), sidebars, header, etc. so that the background color doesn't show through. Of course some may want to have a background image that shows though all the text so you would leave those blank. As for CSS and HTML related issues I often go to W3Schools for help with syntax. When you go to the site on the top of the menu to the left you will see Learn CSS for example. You can try out various pieces of code live.

You the man! I got it! although obviously I used a vertical one as opposed to a horizontal one like I originally wanted. When I tried to use a horizontal one it was off centered and I didn't seem to be able to center it. No matter, it looks good the way it is. Thanks again!

Actually, while I've got this going, I've got two other things I'd like to do and then I'm done. I'd like to make the widget title boxes red and then also round the top edges of them. Again, I have absolutely no clue how to do this, but if someone could help I would be beyond appreciative! Thanks again lmilesw.

Go to ATO>Style WIDGETS>Widget Title Box and add whatever code you want. If you want the background to be red you can just put

background-color:red;

You can of course use hex numbers for other colors. If you want the text to be red use

color:red;

If you want the border red use

border:1px solid red;

For the top rounded corners I would guess you could use

-moz-border-radius-topright:10px;
-moz-border-radius-topleft:10px;
-khtml-border-radius-topright: 10px;
-khtml-border-radius-topleft: 10px;
-webkit-border-radius-topright:10px;
-webkit-border-radius-topleft:10px;
border-radius-topright: 10px;
border-radius-topleft: 10px;

All the extra code here is because different browsers use different implementations of the CSS for rounded corners. You can change the 10px to different values for a smaller or larger radius.