Joomla or Mambo Jambo

This is just a brief diary, thoughts and tips from setting up my first website using Joomla, the Open Source content management system.
What to do first - try to find an environment in which to try things out. I opted for a free 30 day trial hosting with .... where the Joomla, apache, php and mysql were all set up. No problems with them so far.
How to get started understanding what to do. I read the recommended Ben's tutorial at churchmissions as my starting point. That led to me downloading PSPad.
etc.
Couldn't find how to make my own template. Realised that by copying the contents of templates/madeyourweb (a default provided by the hosting company but also on the joomla site) to a new directory templates/maurice and using the template chooser, then I could use maurice as my template. Bit confusing in the site templates manager, where the name remained the same. Until I discovered that I could change those details at the top of the templatedetails.xml file (author, name, url etc.).
Also changed one of the image files to see the effect. No obvious change in appearance of site, until I changed index.php at lines 26 and 27 to modify the location of the template and css files from /templates/madeyourweb to /templates/maurice. The learning curve continues.