Creating an “About Blog” type of page

Hello,
I’d like to create an About page on my new WP blog. The only thing that I am sure of is that I know I have to copy the index.php page and ‘gut’ it out. Only, I’m not sure what to gut. I’d like to leave the inofrmation from the side bars in and only have the “About” info in the area of the page where the post would normally be.
Also, do I save the page as about.php and just link to it from the index page?
Thanks,