okay well...
http://selio.net/stuff/layout

in the center of the page, below the banner
it says Welcome
and then welcome to selio

when viewed in IE, that all has a blueish background
only the part that says "Welcome" should have a blue background
the other part should have a white background

CSS: http://selio.net/stuff/layout/css.css

in Firefox it looks fine, but not in IE

any help is appreciated

that area is looking for a class called "body" and in your css page, there is no class called body, just your normal body tag specified in there.

to avoid confusion, perhaps add this into your css page...

.contentarea {background-color:#ffffff;}

then change your html coding to this...

<p class="contentarea">Hello Welcome.</p>

well,

each page has this:
<p class="header">THEHEADER</p>

i'd like not to have to change the format on every page