Hi!  I'm a noob.  I've been managing a site, but, to be honest, I don't really understand all the tools that Guildportal has to offer.

So, I decided I wanted to change the look of my site from something that was really cutting edge in 1990 to something that looks a little more modern.  I've had lots of content, and had a banner graphic that I used for the old site-look.  Opting to just dump the old look, I went ahead and opened the Control Panel, clicked the drop-down to Style Tools, clicked Full Themes-->Browse Themes, and snagged that new snazzy Deathwing template.  And it looked fine, but the old Banner Graphic was in it, and  that just looked terrible.   The old graphic appeared as an overlay on the new Deathwing banner, and in this mystery black space above the banner, but under the default Guildportal login.

So, fiddling around some more, I found the Site Banner Image on the General Style settings, and deleted the old Banner Graphic.  That cleared the old graphic in it's duplicate areas.  And then I clicked the link for Create a Banner and got the Banner Builder tool.  And it was cool.  I clicked and tried a number of things, and decided that in the end, I could just make my own banner.  And so I did.  I grabbed some game landscape and uploaded it.  Headed back to the Banner Builder and tried to add some cool Guild Title by clicking the Gradient Text and using my custom banner image.   Clicked Update Preview, liked the look and Save Banner.  Reloaded my Site, and it looked all right.

But it didn't last--the banner keeps going to giant, white, not-gradient text.  I've repeated this process with all kinds of variations.  I changed the Site Template to the Horde which is similar, but black like the old site, so my light green and yellow text didn't all have to be updated.  Many of the changes have stuck, but I have a great deal of confusion about what tools really govern the links, the Navigation Bar (there seem to be 2 tools that are fighting for supremacy, the new one over-writing the old one, but I can't get the colors to match quite right...), and finally, the Banner itself.

I've got the site to a point where it's presentable, but would REALLY like to see that Gradient Text stick to my nice new banner. 
And if I could get rid of the mystery black space, which also hosts the guild name and will be gradient for a few moments, that'd be nice, too.

Thanks!