Yup. You could do a table but there are some drawbacks. Mostly nothing loads until everything loads. One trick people are doing is to take the main body div and put a two-column table in it, making the sidebar be the third column. But why bother when you can do it purely with CSS?

Check out the [url=http://wonderwinds.com/testbed/index.php?blog=2&skin=Ality]Ality skin[/url]. Wanna do it yourself instead of trying to fix up good old Ality? Check out glish for a [url=http://glish.com/css/2.asp]3-columns, all variable-width, full screen[/url] or [url=http://glish.com/css/7.asp]3-columns, middle fixed-width, full screen[/url]. When you make something nice are you going to submit it to the skins list? If you do would it have valid xhtml and css? Would it work in a variety of browsers at different screen resolutions? Just curious. Have fun!!!

I actually looked at that particular skin (ality) but determined that I did not like the fixed column deal... not being that familiar with all this php stuff (more of an html guy) I wasn't really thinking about creating a skin from scratch right now... (but might in the future).

I guess the main question I have is regarding what syntax starts and stops a column or a sidebar (ie: like <td> </td> in html) - and whether or not it is that simple editing one of these skins. IOW... the simplist way to enter a new column on the site without getting errors.

My main webite http://www.coldheartedtruth.com has plenty of bells and whistles with scrolling text, and lots of java stuff... and some of my 'fans' are looking for more action (i guess). I already got emails in addition to the responses in the comment section (and one phonecall). Most see the new design as too boring... but the old design is a pain in the butt to load and takes a bit of work to update (and the blogging part is all homemade).

I think this is just a learning curve for me... but I have been told that this css/php sort of programing is the way to do...

The simplest way will be to take a skin (and I highly recommend you download the 'custom' from the skins page instead of the custom that comes with b2evo or any WP-clone) and put a 2-column table inside the main div. Your code will look something like this:

<div class="pageHeader">
content
</div>

<div class="bPosts">
add your two-column table here
put your groovy stuff for your left side bar in your table left column
put the b2evo stuff that makes the posts in your table right column
</div>

<div class="bSideBar">
content
</div>

<p class="baseline">
credits and stuff
</p>

You then poke through the style sheet and see where the bPosts and bSideBar divs are defined. Each one gets a width and they don't add up to 100% for a reason. Using those numbers you can make your right side be thinner or thicker.