Here is the very simplest example of how to do it. Last week I was asked to do a freebie for someone so I very quickly put this together.
I used the classic theme and made a copy of it with the new name sussex in the coppermine themes directory.
This is what the webpage looks like without the cppermine code installed.
http://www.sussex-windsurfing.co.uk/The white areas in the middle is just a table. Here is the code.
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><!-- InstanceBegin template="/Templates/sussex.dwt" codeOutsideHTMLIsLocked="false" -->
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<!-- InstanceBeginEditable name="doctitle" -->
<title>Untitled Document</title>
<!-- InstanceEndEditable -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/style.css" type="text/css" />
<style type="text/css">
<!--
body {
background-color: #000000;
}
.style5 {
color: #FFFFFF;
font-weight: bold;
font-size: 36px;
}
.style7 {color: #999999}
.style8 {font-size: 12px}
-->
</style>
<!-- InstanceBeginEditable name="head" --><!-- InstanceEndEditable -->
</head>
<body>
<table width="778" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" bordercolor="#FFFFFF" bgcolor="#000000">
<tr>
<td width="14"> </td>
<td width="751"><div align="center">S<span class="style5">SUSSEX WINDSURFING</span></div></td>
<td width="13"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> </td>
<td><div align="center">
<p class="style7">YOUR WINDSURFING WEBSITE</p>
<p class="style7"> </p>
</div></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td height="94" colspan="3" background="images/a1.jpg"><table width="695" height="65" border="0" align="center">
<tr>
<td><div align="center"><strong><a href="index.html">HOME</a></strong></div></td>
<td><div align="center"><strong><a href="About.html">ABOUT US</a></strong></div></td>
<td><div align="center"><strong><a href="cpg1.4.12/cpg1412/index.php">GALLERY</a></strong></div></td>
<td><div align="center"><strong><a href="Contact.html">CONTACT</a></strong></div></td>
</tr>
</table></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td rowspan="3" bgcolor="#000000"></td>
<td bordercolor="#FFFFFF" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"></td>
<td rowspan="3" bgcolor="#000000"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td bordercolor="#FFFFFF" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><table width="98%" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="5">
<tr>
<td><!-- InstanceBeginEditable name="EditRegion1" -->Website coming soon<!-- InstanceEndEditable --></td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td bordercolor="#FFFFFF" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" class="style7"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td height="78" colspan="3" background="images/a4.jpg"><div align="center" class="style8">
<p>Copyright 2007. A <a href="http://www.windsurf.me.uk">WINDSURF.ME.UK</a> Production.</p>
</div></td>
</tr>
</table>
<p> </p>
<table width="778" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" bordercolor="#FFFFFF" bgcolor="#000000"></table>
</body>
<!-- InstanceEnd --></html>
As you can see, a very simple design.
To embed coppermine in this I saved this code in the newly created sussex directory created above and simple pasted the following code nicked from the classic theme into the table (where currently sits "website coming soon"
{CUSTOM_HEADER}
<table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="20" cellspacing="20">
<tr>
<td valign="top" style="border: 1px solid #666666;background-color:#FFFFFF;">
<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td width="100%" align="center">
<h1>{GAL_NAME}</h1>
<h3>{GAL_DESCRIPTION}</h3><br />
{SYS_MENU} <br /> {SUB_MENU}
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td align="center" valign="top">
{LANGUAGE_SELECT_FLAGS}
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center" valign="top">
{THEME_SELECT_LIST}
{LANGUAGE_SELECT_LIST}
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<img src="images/spacer.gif" width="1" height="15" alt="" />
<br />
<table width="100%" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr>
<td align="left" valign="top">
{ADMIN_MENU}
{GALLERY}
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
{CUSTOM_FOOTER}{VANITY}
Not forgetting to put
<link rel="stylesheet" href="themes/classic/style.css" type="text/css" />
In the head of the document to link to the stylesheet.
I then saved this completed file over template.html in the sussex directory I created above and selected the sussex theme from within coppermine and voila, all sorted as you can see in the final page here
http://www.sussex-windsurfing.co.uk/cpg1.4.12/cpg1412/index.phpA very simple example of how to do it but once you know how you can apply this to any website.