Hi. I am using XOOPS on my newest server, replacing my old and slow greymatter installation. I am not concerned about moving old entries, as I have taken a 16 month hiatus from blogging.

I would like to use XOOPS as blog, and would like my blog to appear on the first (front, top, whatever) page of my website (index.php). How do I go about placing a blog in a center block on the first page?

I notice that some people have their sites' menus "boxed" by category. Ex: Instead of having a separate css style separating the link headings (Community, User Menu, General Information) from the actual pages (Home, News, etc.) I would like to know how to place the links into actual boxes, like in chilledbeats.org. I also like the color coding shown in http://www.fantasyref.com/. I've dabbled with php coding before and would love to learn more!

If anybody can shed any light on my situation(s), I heartily thank you

You can find the weBlog module for XOOPS 2 here: weBlog.

This module works great and is really useful - also if you want it to show up on your top page, you just set that in the admin panel>Site Preferences>General Settings. It will let you set any module as your top page

I'm not sure I understand your second question, though.

Thanks for the weblog info. I will check the page out in a few minutes.

As to the navigation, I see that the navigation of http://www.chilledbeats.org has the links separated by category into separate cell-like things.

Dumb ASCII Example:
+------+
|Title 1|
+------+
|Link 1 |
|Link 2 |
|Link 3 |
+------+

+------+
|Title 2|
+------+
|Link 1 |
|Link 2 |
|Link 3 |
+------+

+------+
|Title 3|
+------+
|Link 1 |
|Link 2 |
|Link 3 |
+------+

The "cell like things" are called "blocks" in XOOPS parlance.

Blocks are content cells, that either export content links from content modules, or can be "hand-crafted" out of bb-code, html, or php. using the admin interface.

Typically all of the blocks in a region (or column) share common visual stylings that are assigned by the theme.

After you have installed the weBlog module, check out the blocks admin interface. There you will see the blocks that are provided by the system and also the modules that you have activated.

Hope this helps...