There are loads of themes available, but you’ll rarely find one that’s exactly what you want (or what the client wants), straight out of the bag… So at some point you’ll need to add a region, and this is how.

In each ‘theme’ you will have a .info file, a page.tpl.php file and the style sheet. The .info file will start with the name of you theme, so themename.info for example.

INFO
To add a new region called ‘Banner’, you open the .info file and you should see a section like:

regions[sidebar_first] = sidebar first

regions[sidebar_last] = sidebar last

regions[header] = header

regions[nav] = nav

regions[content_top] = content top

regions[content] = content

regions[content_bottom] = content bottom

regions[footer] = footer

To add our new region we just add it to the above like: regions[banner] = Banner
Note: the first ‘banner’ is all lowercase, no spaces, and the second ‘Banner’ is for display, so can have spaces, etc, just be careful with punctuation.

Your new region will now show on the ‘blocks’ page, and you can start assigning blocks to your new region. (Flush cache if it doesn’t show). However it won’t appear on the website pages yet.

PAGE TPL
In the page.tpl.php page, find the area you want the new region to show and paste the following:

<?php if($banner){ ?>

    <div id="banner">

        <?php print $banner; ?>

    </div>

<?php } ?>

Note: The variable you used in region[] (banner) is also used here, but it has a $ sign in front. i.e. $banner. The first line in the code above uses if to check that something has been put in the banner region, (i.e. a block), and if it has, line 3 prints/writes it to the page as it’s being built. Lines 2 and 4 add the CSS div start/end with an id of banner so you can control it in the stylesheet by using #banner.

STYLESHEET
Add the following and amend it as you see fit:

#banner  { 

    width: 960px; 

    height: 300px; 

    clear: both; 

    margin: 0; 

    padding: 0; 

    background: #f0f; 

    position: relative;

}

See? Painless really… If something isn’t showing, remember to flush the cache so the system loads the .info and template files again.