Side Boxes not appearing

Folks I realize I am old and slow, but waiting for the book and trying to get a page up is making me older. I have a clean install and have a custom template set up as well as the classic green. For some reason the sidebox layout is not working. Can not get the several of the side boxes to appear on the main page. I thought at first it was a permission problem and double checked that, then I thought it may be a problem since I use a linux desktop so went to another box and ran admin from IE. I did search the forum and didn't find this problem, so what did I not do?

What's your URL? And you ARE turning all the boxes "On" that you want to display in Admin>Tools>Layout Boxes Controller?

Well as always after 18 years as a perl monger I think I found what i was missing. Tell me if I am wrong, I apoligize for not bieng current with PHP or CSS but it appears that the code is on the page but unless I stick some type of content in the code between bof and eof they will not appear. I am playing with some of the free templates and I will tell you that until the book arrives I will be disabled. heck I can't even see well enough to read my silly post. BTW thanks for the quick reply and you can see the mess at http://foxtrot.nwla.com/microfib (until I get it up).
Mel

Well I am having some sucess decided to make my own and now having a fit with the left column. If one of you super Zenners can look at http://foxtrot.nwla.com/microfib and tell me what I broke in the CSS to make that mess I would truly appreciate it. Trying to get both side boxes to match but I wanted Puplle and Yellow now have Black and Yellow and the left column has a problem.
Mel

If you're talking about putting content on your main page, that's done in Admin>Tools>Define Pages Editor. Select the page you want to edit from the dropdown.....example... (define_main_page.php).You can use either plain text or HTML, but in order to use the HTML Editor, you have to make sure it's turned on In Admin>Comfiguration>My Store..........Find HTML Editor (second from bottom) and select HTMLAREA.

Hope this helps.