How would I make boxes like in xanga pages (on the left side where they put subscribees and info and pic of themselves). Thanks for any assistance and help. Muchly appreciated.

Try enclosing them with DIV tags: <div style="border: 2px solid #ff00ff;">your text</div>

Thanks! =)

How do I make those text boxes translucent/transparent?

div are transparent to begin with.

stoopid me lol thx.

If you want translucency, you can put semi-transparent PNGs as the background for your DIVs but they will only work for Mozilla and Opera browsers, not IE.