Is there a guide to the default templates supplied with MT4? The default templates are no use to me as I need to create more bespoke designs but I don't want to discard them and start from scratch as there is some very clever stuff in the way that they are modularised so that one template serves several different purposes and they modify themselves depending upon how they are being used. I'd like to retain some of these features so I'm having to take them apart bit by bit and find out what does what, which is OK but it's slow. Is there a guide to how they work?

@Alberto - That capability does not exist yet. It must be done manually. But I hear there is a plugin called Template Exporter and another called Template Importer that could help achieve that you are describing. Check mt-hacks.com for them.

We're starting to get together some good resources on the default templates. Take a look at the extensively-updated mt:Entries docs, MT4's comment templates for MT3 users, and MT4's main index default templates, which are all works in progress, but should provide a good place to start.

@Brad, that diagram you linked looks interesting. It would be great to have something similar for MT4 as templates/themes are quite confusing when you're coming into MT for the first time.

All I want to know is how to have a two column blog. The search produces nothing. I search on the MTSetVar info in the Main Index template and get nothing about what any of those variables mean.

The provided main index template is three column, but I don't know how to set or unset that. There's no explication anywhere of simple stuff like that, just incredible long lists of stuff to run through with the majority of it useless unless you are building a huge site.

All I want to do is have a few blogs on the site linked above. Since I have a template, that shouldn't be too hard. But apparently it is.

I loved MT up until 3.x, but this is frustrating as all get out.

Nathan - If you're using default templates: go to Design > Styles, choose a style, then choose your layout.

If you're using your own custom templates then MT doesn't control or limit the number of columns that you can have.

The template we used before MT was very poor with very little versitality. With MT we will be able to make the impression we want. We especially like, the tagging feature, currently working and improving our site, a work in progress :)

Thanks it's simpler & more straight forward in the new version of MT.