How to move columns for this theme??

Look in sidebar.php
You will have to split this up
<div id="sidebar">
This section calls the right sidebar –

<div class="left-sidecolumn">
This section calls the left sidebar

Likely you will need to make a leftsidebar.php with the above section and omit it from the sidebar.php

index.php calls the sidebar

<?php get_header(); ?>
		<div id="primary-content">
<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/theloop.php'); ?>
		</div>
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
<?php get_footer(); ?>

You will need to call the leftsidebar.php in here probably before the call for the loop. Maybe like so

<?php get_header(); ?>
<?php get_leftsidebar(); ?>
		<div id="primary-content">
<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/theloop.php'); ?>
		</div>
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
<?php get_footer(); ?>

I’m not positive about this as this is not my area of expertise. :>)

<?php get_leftsidebar(); ?>
That will never work. You have to call it in the same way as theloop.php is called.

aargh…forgot the template path include. Maybe you can explain it better moshu.

Well, when the posts starts like this:

only know very little CSS

then the proper advice is: get a theme that has the layout you want.

That’s me – I’m lazy.

Well, if WP would make it absolutely clear PRE-installation that in-depth theme customization and/or Theme Development is best left to the savvy front-end web developers or, at the very least, to the people who have -some- sort of front-end knowledge, then maybe there wouldn’t be so many people flocking to the forums with the ‘Help me theme my WP because I don’t understand CSS or XHTML!’ issues?

Just a thought?

The impression I’m getting is that everyone ELSE is getting the impression that WP is easy-peasy to custom theme by oneself when it isn’t easy-peasy without having at least some working knowledge of what goes into WP theming.

For the record, I like WP how it is and have no complaints myself, but I actually do front-end stuff.

To the OP serenalove:

Yes, you will need to rewrite the CSS code, but in addition, depending on what you want in your second sidebar, you might need to rewrite the PHP coding if you want widgets in that sidebar and you will need to rewrite XHTML as well. If you don’t understand PHP or CSS, doing this on your own will probably be rather difficult to do

For these reasons, I also suggest taking a look at some 3 column layouts, picking one that is closest to how you want your site to work, and then working from there to make it look like how you want it to.

MoTStudio,
I agree with you. I called the phenomenon the 5 minutes trap of WP…

Hehe, nice post Moshu. I actually liked messing around with themes, but Serena starts with the most difficult questions. I myself just got a theme that was basically what I wanted and started chaning fonts, colours, background, etc., but I pretty soon found out that trying to mess with sidebar widths or text area sizes is way over my head. I’m happy that my sites look quite like I had in mind, so I’ll leave that alone for a few years.

But maybe in some future release of WP, there will be something more than widgets and changing header images from the dashboard living a bit more upto the five-minute-easyness.

A total spot-on post, moshu.

Completely agree with you on all accounts and then some.