I'm new to MT and have what may be a basic question. As nice as they are, I don't want to use any of the MT blog formats. I'd like to use my own sites header and footer virtual includes, which will narrow the page to 971px and uses a lot less CSS. How do I change the header and footer to match what I have? Or, and I like this option too, how do I create an index template(s) that I can use to put content into?
Thanks, David
Reported on Movable Type 4.2

You have two templates for that: Banner Header and Banner Footer with the default template set. You might want to play around with some of the alternative template sets like Sandbox (linked on the main page and in the plugins directory). That might suit you better.
WRT creating a new index template, just got to Design->Template and create a new index template. It's that simple. However, if you want to create a static page for displaying content, it's better to just create a Page from the Create->Page menu. You can control where it goes using the folder management menu items to have Movable Type manager certain folder paths.
Great - worked like a charm. Now... a new question. I've googled and read so much info, but still, can't get this very simple thing to work: setting an MT variable and then using it to display the value on a page. Will post separately... Thanks for the quick reply.
David
Look up the template tags SetVar and Var.
Look up the template tags SetVar and Var.