Someone responding to my query, yay!!!!
Thanks Peter, I am not looking for a major reform on the stock theme,
basically what i am trying to do is simple integration:
i basically removed the stock header, footer and then added new header, footer and side panels and also new styles(e.g css)of my website design to the stock theme(default).
It worked, looked great, but the layout and formatting start to play funny once i logged in as a client. I think this is because i didn't make changes to the clientarea.tpl file(and the system was trying to add the new header, footer,and side panels to the unedited clientarea.tpl file and tries to apply these new items under the stocked format(e.g class, layout, size of the text box ect).
So my question is, because my website has a completely different styles/css
therefore,
i would be looking at changing every tpl files, in other word, creating a new tpl template to cater for the css format difference between my requirements and the stock template possesses.
Incidentally, are there any tutorial on tpl, i had found nothing on this and i found tpl is less intuitive than css but i am getting my head around that gradually.
Please let me know.
thanks in advance.