The fix for the index page redirect would to be to use the cart correctly and not try and do a redirect. Change the ezpage link for home to point to index.php?main_page= on the internal link line
Awesome...now I have to go in and fix that center box header.

Even though you have a custom template already you should be following override procedures in the language files and other places were overrides would be used. You would name the overrides folder the same as the custom template name, in your case that would be theme136. So your overrides folder for the meta_tags.php file would be includes/languages/english/theme136/meta_tags.php
I think I'm confused here, and it probably covers it more in-depth in the book under advanced customization (almost there, but not quite, and the client wants his site), but that doesn't confuse the server, for lack of a better phrase? Two folders, named the same, at the includes level? And how do I know which folder is my overrides folder?

So your statement: is Obviously wrong.
I stand corrected. I will have to play around with the metatags more.

This displays perfectly fine
Fixed. Ugly, but fixed. I'll see what I can do to clean that up.

From an SEO standpoint, Google is looking for my <title> and my <h1> to essentially match each other, but I'm not seeing any <h1> tags. What's up with that?

http://www.ewebmarketing.com.au/seob...nce-of-h1-tags

http://blogingenuity.com/2009/04/14/...ct-or-fiction/

I was able to find the nofollows and delete them. I'll give it a couple of days or so and see if we pop up in Google.

Thank you again. I'm learning a lot!