Problem getting PS "template" to work properly after slicing

Question

Hi guys,
Just a heads up first, this is going to be a little long for two reasons: 1) I have a bad habit of being verbose  2) I'm going to explain exactly what my problem is and what steps I took to get there so everyone knows exactly what has been done so far.
So, I decided to give my hand a try at designing a full page template purely in Photoshop (CS4 for PS and Dreamweaver). It worked out great, looks awesome... but I didn't know what to do next. I'm currently enrolled for Web Design & Interactive Media in college, but alas I just started 5.5 weeks ago. However, I do have a photoshop learning center and posted my problem to my professors. After some long discussion of my professor telling me to slice it and just save to web & devices, and me finally being able to get it click that doing this makes a bunch of tables out of the images, I had my first full graphic web template. Problem #1: I have not worked with tables since Dreamweaver was Macromedia Dreamweaver 8... eons ago it seems. So, after finally getting everything into an HTML document, where I felt more at home, I started to play around with the tables, trying to remember anything at all about them. My professor helpfully suggested nesting the tables... it was greek to me. However, we live in the internet age, so I googled it up.
Now I have my images all in wonderfully organized tables, except for five of the images. This is the jpeg of the template. So, I was loving the template, and that is the photoshop .jpg I saved to show my girlfriend what it would end up looking like. After realizing that I had NO idea how to get the text over those specific area's while the "content boxes" were still in tables, I decided to throw in my puny skill in CSS. I made new slices, and sliced up the upper two sections for the content-title1 & content-title2 and then made 2 more new slices for content-left and content-right, then a fifth slice for the bottom of the rounded boxes content-footer. Now, I have used others' templates in the past such as this site but he was using familiar territory for me.. <div> tags. Ok, so anyway I have 4 new tables to throw in... one each for the content headers "News" and the "Welcome to Illuminati" parts, and then two other boxes for the actual content of each section. After trying to figure out how to nest tables, I gave it a shot and while in design mode, it actually works... except the navbar is slid out far to the right. And when I uploaded the site, not only is the navbar way out in deep right field, but my content-right table slid under content-left. You can see the end result here.
What I need help on:
If any kind soul could please take a look at my code and tell me exactly where I'm fubarring things up, I would greatly appreciate it!
If said kind soul could show me how to fix said problems, I would appreciate it even more!!
Lastly, on that Livengood Investments website, if you notice the bottom section where the "article of the week" and thumblist is, with that guys' template, as I add content to those sections, it grows down so that you never have gaps or spaces etc. That is why I cut the middle content boxes into two, so that I could add content without worry of having the gaps etc. I did notice though, that if one side is longer in text than the other (on my secondlife.lift4ullc.com/test2.html site) then the other side has a gap. I'm going to assume this is because with the Livengood-Investments site, that middle section is actually 1 background? I could do the same with the boxes on my site, make them 1 section instead of two, if only I knew how to have two separate tables over their individual box... thanks!
Every guide or tutorial or video I have found on the net about nesting tables gives you a simple 2 column 5 row walk-through. Very nice, and handy in some cases I'm sure, but I can't see how that helps me at this particular moment. =( Thank you in advance everyone, for your patience while I rambled, and your help in this matter.
Matt

Answer 1

Wow, quick replies! I knew there was a reason I love the Adobe forums over my normal haunt at Web Designers Group (WDG)! ^.^ Although, in fairness to them, they've been helpful before as well. Now, on to the replies....
@SnakeEyez02: PM coming your way, thank you so very much! With the www.livengood-investments site, what I did was google up "free web templates" and found that layout (different background, and some customization to it to make it fit the company etc) but it was almost purely CSS done. I would say I've been working with CSS in some form or fashion for roughly 2 years, but only within the last 1-2 months have I really sat down to try to learn CSS. Table layouts (for me) are a thing of the past, when everyone and your uncle had a geocities or some other website. Thank you for letting me know this is possible to do without all of the tables... that is a huge relief and load off of my shoulders. http://secondlife.lift4ullc.com was my "first run" test at the website you've seen, and I've already gone in detail over that code to see why I have the gaps in my logo/header/navbar area, because for some reason I changed the size of those div's that were larger than the images But, I tried out that CSS site before I learned about slicing in PS, so that is why the color scheme is so different. I left it as it is because I would rather have my nifty content boxes ;-) Ok, so I have the starter, and I'll step back and just save the images and not the images + html. From there I'll start designing the site with CSS and div tags instead of the dreaded tables. Like I said though, PM coming. Thank you in advance for the help, I hope I don't make it too difficult for you
@Boss Yes, I just started college, but I'm 28 now and have been meddling in some form or fashion in web sites for nearly 15 years. I just decided in the past month or so to actually turn it from a "hobby" to something more serious with the hopes of actually making a career out of it. I agree with you that CSS design is better than tables. I hate tables, haven't used tables in many years, and CSS is just so much easier to tweak and read the code than a page full of table coding (as I've learned these last few days). I know I'll be learning some coding in my later courses (today was the end of my first term freshman year) such as PHP, JavaScript, and I *think* some C+/++. CSS, I'm not really sure on. I have no doubt though that I'll be able to bug my professors that teach the courses for CSS... they should be up to date with standards and coding. This professor is actually a Photoshop specialist, and while I'm sure he knows some HTML and CSS, probably not as much as a coder or web developer (as opposed to him being a graphics designer). Thank you very much for the tutorial link, I really do appreciate it. I love tutorials, but sometimes the search for a good tutorial can be almost as fustrating as trying to figure these stupid tables out LOL. However, as I mentioned above, now that I know I can, I am switching over to CSS with yours and SnakeEyez's suggestions. Thank you Boss!
Matt