If you take a look at your layout2b.css file you have the following code:

p, .storyContent {
	font:11px/20px verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
	margin: 0px 15px 0px 20px;
	padding:0px;
	}

The 0px top and bottom margins are causing the spacing problems. Remove them or set them to what you'd like and that problem should be solved.

As for a sidebar of links, in b2e that's called a linkblog. In the backoffice you can setup a linkblog to be assigned to your main weblog. Then anytime you post a link to the linkblog it will automatically appear in your sidebar. You can snoop around in the documentation for more about that.

To make your images flow with the text you can go to your img.css file and change the img code to:

img {
	border: none;
        float: left;
        margin-right: 5px;

}

That adds a float left (you could put your pictures to the right also). And then it sets a margin so the words don't run right up against the text. Try it out and see how it works for you.

Hope that helps!

Thanks! I'll probably destroy half my site trying to do this, but that helps immeasurably.

-S.

Where in the layout.css file? I can't find it in the back office...told ya, we're downright raw when it comes to this stuff.

The css files aren't edited in the backoffice. You'll have to do that on your hard drive and then upload the changed copy to your server. The layout2b.css file is probably in the same directory as your b2original skin. Look for the skins folder in your installation and you should be able to find them.