Can someone help a newbie out?

[eluser]CroNiX[/eluser]
If you don't understand the underlying language that CI is written on top of, you will not have a very easy time. It'd be like taking Algebra without knowing basic math. You will have one big learning curve. Can it be done? Sure, but it will be a lot harder than taking things in order.

I'm guessing your remaining errors are in your template.php file. What are the actual errors? Also, your opening php tag should be <?php