Theme Sidebar Manipulation: Necessary??

Hi All –

Please forgive me if the questions below are novice-level, but I set up my first site a couple of months ago, and I’m continuing to “chip away” and move forward. I’m pretty happy with the way things are progressing so far – has been kind of fun, really.

Prototype Site: https://www.all-about-the-house.com

I’m at the point now, though, where I feel I have a “critical mass” of original content, and I’m just starting to consider further manipulation of the sidebar – for additional aesthetics, advertisements and back-links as well. You can already see some of this on the site.

Here are my two essential questions:

Q1: It seems like most of the advertisements I see are optimized for 300 pixel width. (Some at 250 and smaller, some longer banners – but the 300 pixel number comes up a LOT.) My current sidebar seems to accommodate 270 pixel width. Would it be prudent for me to change to this to 300-pixel width before progressing any further? Thoughts/Opinions? (I kind of like the current width, frankly.)

Q2: I have plenty of software development background, but it’s been about 10 years and my background is primarily in C, C++, Java and Ksh. Messing with CSS/HTML and PHP is fine, but having to do all three I’ve found thus far to be… well, a bit painfully cumbersome! ?? If I wanted to change the sidebar width, I know I have to do so in style.css — but what specifically do I look for? I have a LAMP environment so I can test off-line, of course. But would all changes be in this one file – and can someone focus me on where to zero-in and the land mines? It’s more than the sidebar, it seems, there’s a sidebar border as well. Plus, if I exceed some magic number, it seems to kill the main content window. What are the 2nd-grade basics here?

Any opinions, thoughts, insights most appreciated!

Mark