Thanks for the extra info Bill,
I don't think that 1st option would do it, I don't know how I could define everything with references like that for it to work. It might be possible but I can't wrap my head around it.
The 2nd thing I would love to do, but again I can't figure out how to make a content template out of the index page, I tried to create one and point the template pointer in the index.php page but I could never get the content area to show up. Maybe it will become a little clearer when/if I get down to the product level and use it for the details page.
As far as those other 2 modules, I saw them and it seemed like only one of them really had changed things but then it also said that in a lot of things there was still a mix of old and new. I had the impression that it might get me closer but wouldn't be the end all.
Thanks for the bit about the infoboxes, I'm not having any issues with those as it was the first thing I tackled (although that was probably what I should have done as what I did was make a new function in includes/classes/boxes called "nonTableBox" and used that everplace that had a call to "tableBox"). But that did lead me to sts_index.php where I found
function replace (&$template) {
$template['content']=sts_strip_content_tags($template['content'], 'Index content');
}
Commenting that out at least keeps the content area intact as it is in index.php, so now at least I can hack away at index.php to change the look and feel.
I feel like a train going down the tracks to oblivion, hackity, hackity, hackity.... No updates for me as everything is tooo altered :)
Thanks!