Hello @metaphor,

Welcome to b2evolution, we hope you enjoy it! All the customization you need could be done by modifying the skin of your blogs or even setting the widgets. As a first step, I recommend you to read this section of the manual: http://b2evolution.net/man/user-guide/, and in general, that manual will be your best partner on this road, of course, anything you need, please come back to us here in the forums.

Note: Maybe you will need some programming skills if you want to apply big changes to your home page.

Regards!

I only have one blog. The home page is nothing like the skin I have selected. Frankly, I was expecting an "install, modify and blog" experience. I was not prepared for extensive study of the product.

B2evolution is a multi-blog environment, but could be easily managed as a single blog. According with your screenshots, you have created a new collection/blog but do not have selected it as default, that's the reason because you see the standard default page on your first screenshot (actually in the first box, below to "Welcome to b2evolution" is a message that says you haven't defined any default blog).

To define a default blog you just need to login as admin and go to Blogs >> All >> Settings, the first fieldset "Display options" shows the field "Default blog to display:", there you should select the blog previously created ("SQL Baren" I guess) and click on "Save!" at the bottom of the page. This way, the default page will be the blog you just selected.

Regards!