Ellen,
I hope you had a good weekend. Let’s see if we can find some answers for you.
Page content color:
In the styling tab of the theme options page, there is an option for “Content Text Color” that sets the color inside the main content areas of the theme. It looks like at the moment it’s set to black (#000000). Try changing it there to your preferred color and see if that does it for you.
Widget Locations:
To have a widget appear on all pages (except the home page), add it to the Default sidebar and make sure none of the other sidebars are in use. The default will be visible as long as one of the more specific sidebars is not being use (page on a page, category in a category archive, staff in the staff section for example).
The home page has its own sidebar area without a fallback.
Title Size
You can hide the page titles with this CSS snippet:
h1.title {
display: none;
}
Slideshow Picture Size:
For the best results, size your slideshow images to be 960 pixels wide by 400 pixels tall.
I hope that helps out. If you have any questions or trouble, let me know.
Have a great week,
Bill