No Magento Header & Custom Navigation

Question

I can't seem to figure out how to disable the header as a whole. I have installed the blank theme, and have been playing in the page XML, but to no avail. I also cannot seem to switch from 2columns-right to 2columns-left, even though i've run searches for every damn file that includes the phrase and swapped it. I'm wondering if it's just not displaying to me, but I've disabled my catch, repeatedly clear it, and have even tried disabling cookies. Anyway, once all this is done, how do i add static pages and my own navigation.

Sorry I know this covers several questions, but I have been tirelessly searching and experimenting on my own to no avail.

thanks!

Answer 1

I can answer the part about adding new static pages.

Go to Admin , Under CMS->Manage Pages ... choose add new Page

Answer 2

Well, I have some of the problems. I did lots of modification to default/mystore/layout/something.xml but saw nothing happen in the frontend.

Then I did the same modification in default/default/layout/something.xml and now changes where done.

For now for me it seems that I can only modify template files in default/mystore/template but not layout files in default/mystore/layout.

Maybe your issue is the same, that Magento is using the default files and not your theme files?