Guys, how do I get this thing to where it looks good? I am having problems customizing the Looks of it.
I am using templates but would do otherwise if I could get it to look descent.
Take a look...
http://www.websitesolution.com/links/Default.html

I want the Fonts SMALL and the black crap gone, and I want every page it displays to show a main menu on the left in a table cell.

Please help if you can?

Just edit the templates to get rid of the "black crap".
Design your templates using either a html editor or perhaps a wysiwyg html design program making sure to leave in the template tags that are on the page now.
We use templates and find them the easiest to use for us. Although others will tell you that nontemplates are easier, its a matter of which you find easier.
In any event it's a matter of editing the templates and the links.css or get rid of the links.css by removing all references to css from the template files.