In Magento, most of the stuffs can be done easily by just doing it as Static Blocks and calling them onto the frontend then. Just goto CMS  > STATIC BLOCKS. Create a new Static Block and enter your title, unique identifier ( for example,  my-right-ad) , set it to enabled state and then just enter your content in there and save it. Then wherever you want to add that static block, all you have to do is, open that html file. If you would like to place on left sidebar, then open this, /app/design/frontend/your_theme/your_theme/template/callouts/left_col.phtml If right, then open this, /app/design/frontend/your_theme/your_theme/template/callouts/right_...

First, log into the shop admin and look under System/Configuration/Advanced/Developer . Before that , make sure, you have selected your Main Website Store or Language from the top drop down of CURRENT CONFIGURATION SCOPE. Then while on the System/Configuration/Advanced/Developer page, you can see a button called, "DEBUG". Open that tab and you will see more two options. It will be, Template Path Hints Add Block Name to Hints. Just select YES for both of them and if the WEBSITE option on its right is marked, just unmark it. With both selected, Magento will display both the path to the php file being called and the name of the block being calle...

Let’s take it step by step. 1. Layout your Structural Blocks (aka Determine your page layouts) When you begin the implementation process, first ask yourself this question: What are the layout needs of my store? What this simply means is: “Will my store always have a left column? Or will some pages have a left, main and a right column? Or perhaps some of the pages will just one column?”. These questions are imperative because the variations of page structure will directly determine the number of skeleton templates you will need to create - For instance, if you have a one column and a 3 column layout, you will need to create two skeleton template accordingly...

There is definitely nothing complicated about doing this. Static blocks are a great way to divide up different types of data blocks to make updating content easier. There are just two simple steps to adding a static block to a cms page. First, create your static block. You will use the identifier to call it on the cms page. Let’s say, for this example, we call the identifier “home-page-promo”. Once your static block is created, edit whatever cms page you would like this block to appear on, and simply put this code in right where you want it to show up: {{block type="cms/block" block_id="home-page-promo"}} And that’s all there is to it....