Jessa,

Warning: you may have to do a little bit of learning. Sorry, but there's really no way around that if you're not going to use b2evo in the "standard" method.

You have two options to make your site look non-mass-produced.

Option 1: Use a skin that you create
This is the recommended choice to go with. It's what I and many other b2evo users do, and I'd like to think that my site doesn't look "mass-produced." After all, the main skin on my site can't be seen anywhere else.

Why do this instead of a "regular" template?
1. It allows you to have multiple different designs (which all can be unique original creations if you like), thus making your page more dynamic and user-centric. If you decide to change the design, you don't have to lose what you had previously - just upload a new skin, make that the default, and you're good to go.
2. You can use the same layout for multiple different pages on your site. Thus, your back-end site infrastructure is further compartmentalized and separated, which is just good design. If you want to change the link that appears on 5 different pages (blogs), you can make a change to a single file, and they're all taken care of.
3. It works no matter what your access type is. It can be "other blog through index.php," or "default blog through index.php," or "stub file," and b2evo will handle it properly.

b2evolution is set up for you to be able to edit the "cusom" skin in the backoffice. (If you prefer a proper text editor, you can use whatever skin name you want. In future versions, the "templates" backoffice tab will eventually allow you to modify all sorts of other stuff, I hear.) When I say "skin_name", I mean the name of whatever skin you're using. A lot of people will edit the custom skin until they get it the way that they want, and then rename the "custom" folder to something else so that it's more original.

Open up blogs/skins/skin_name/_main.php in a text editor. Check out [url=http://b2evolution.net/man]the manual[/url]'s entries on [url=http://b2evolution.net/man/2004/06/16/evo_skins]evoSkins[/url], the [url=http://b2evolution.net/man/2004/06/16/main_template]_main.php file[/url], [url=http://b2evolution.net/man/2004/06/17/templates]template files[/url], and [url=http://b2evolution.net/man/2004/06/04/template_functions]the functions to use[/url].

Option 2: Use a plain template
In the default installation of b2evolution, there are a few files called "noskin_a.php", "noskin_b.php", etc. I believe that they're based on the "fplanque2002" skin, but you can either look at them to see how it's done, or edit them incrementally to create what you want. Basically, a template only has a few main features.

First, tell b2evo not to use a skin:

$skin = '';

Next, get the b2evo ball rolling:

require(dirname(__FILE__).'/b2evocore/_blog_main.php');

There's also some other initializations and setup you can do in the beginning of the template. Check out "a_noskin.php" or "noskin_a.php" and read the comments for more direction.

Why would you do this instead of using a skin?
If you already have a fully crafted webpage, and just want to include a few b2evo features into it, and you don't want to use b2evo as the main CMS that drives your site, then a plain template is probably the best way to go. Copy the top PHP section out of one of the noskin files into your page. Then, use the [url=http://b2evolution.net/man/2004/06/04/template_functions]template functions[/url] to do stuff.

installed b2evo through my host. i didn't even have to do a thing besides pick a folder name.

You may be using an outdated version. Since I'm using 0.9, and most of the manual is based on that version, it may be a good idea to [url=http://b2evolution.net/downloads/index.html]upgrade[/url] if you're still on 0.8.

i know the old b2 had an easy code where you pasted it in and leter rip.

In most cases, it is fundamentally impossible to add features without adding complexity; in all other cases, it is extremely difficult.

If this post doesn't answer your questions, please let us know what more help you need.