Intro

I am in the process of trying to convert my first HTML/CSS design into a theme for Drupal. I have used ModX for quite a few designs and appreciate the ability to create different page templates and custom variables to be assigned to those templates. However I seem to be having some issues making the transition.

The site I am working on theming in Drupal is for a real estate agent. Each page/section will have a different set of content associated with it and will need to display only that content. For example, there will be a page for current listings, each of which will be formatted by a custom content type. However, when I call the content on the home page (or on other pages) I do not want to see this listing data.

Layout

The layout of the site and the regions associated with each page/section is as follows:

• Home
  • Spotlight
  • Featured 1
  • Featured 2
• About
  • Spotlight
  • Bios - Profiles of each agent (each will be a node with name, contact info, pic, etc) listed on the page; multiple nodes listed
  • Sidebar
• Listings
  • Spotlight
  • Listings - Profiles of properties (each will be a node with locations, basic info, pic, etc) listed on the page; multiple nodes listed
  • Sidebar
• Services
  • Spotlight
  • Content - general paragraph text area
  • Sidebar
  • News/Blog
  • News/Blog Items - List of stories with summaries and links to full article
  • Sidebar

Each page/section will use the same header and footer.

Issue

I have done some reading on Drupal, custom content types (and CCK), Views, and Pathauto. However I have not been able to get a clear picture of how to put it all together to accomplish what I am attempting. What I really would like to know is which modules to use, how best to use them, which elements I need to use where, and what template files I should be using to theme the elements I need to use. Any help or reference to useful resources would be much appreciated.