Seems so simple, but driving me crazy!

[tony_sar]

Yes. you are missing Tutorials / FAQ on top of this page.
what you want to do is accomplished through admin section .

you can turn off both side boxes leaving center box , you can turn off center boxes .

shopping cart option is available only as side box , however, there is a simple addon that will show shopping cart in header.

[cilaes]

Yes. you are missing Tutorials / FAQ on top of this page.
what you want to do is accomplished through admin section .

you can turn off both side boxes leaving center box , you can turn off center boxes .

shopping cart option is available only as side box , however, there is a simple addon that will show shopping cart in header.

i'm not wanting to turn off the side boxes, I want to hard-code my current HTML into a new template and use the zencart template variable to send the user from main page -> product page -> checkout... that's it!

I've created my own template from the documentation, etc, but when creating "includes/templates/ <my template> /common/tpl_main_page.php" it doesn't change anything.

[cilaes]

i'm not wanting to turn off the side boxes, I want to hard-code my current HTML into a new template and use the zencart template variable to send the user from main page -> product page -> checkout... that's it!

I've created my own template from the documentation, etc, but when creating "includes/templates/ <my template> /common/tpl_main_page.php" it doesn't change anything.

I take that back, sorry. I'm beginning to gain some ground here by referencing default_template... However, where does the original styling come from when I don't have a file in place? For example, I'm trying to display my main content using

require($body_code) 

but where is body_code actually formatted before it's assigned to that variable?