If you did want to carry on now that you have built your template then my advice is that you use nested tables. The easiest way to make sure that nothing shifts is insert a table that has a width value of 100%. Then take all your content that you have created and move it inside that table.
You may find it easier to start again seen as though you have a few teething probs.
In Dreamweaver you will find that even if you have set table widths to a fixed value, as soon as you put an image that is too wide inside a column it will push the value and mess up your layout.
Here is what I would do if I were you:
1. File New and create a standard HTML page
2. Insert a table that is 1 column and 1 row (a box)
3. Make the table width value 100%
4. Once you have created that table click inside it and insert another table with a fixed width (a common width is around 800px... forget about using % to size anything else, just use px values from now on!)
5. If you nave a banner then use this first table to house it.
6. Just carry on adding another 800px wide single rom table underneath building from top to bottom as you go.
7. If you want to add text and an image in one of these nested tables then use the 'split cells' option and for example add 3 columns, one for text, one as a spacer between text and image and one for the image. If your image is 350px wide you will need to set the width value on that cell to 350px, the spacer cell to 50px and the text cell to 400px this giving you a total width of 800px when the values are added together. I suspect that is why things are moving around for you.
8. When you are adding text to the page make sure you create a css style for each different text you use otherwise your browser will mess with your text layout aswell.
One thing i forgot to say and you may already know is that you create editable regions for the parts of the page that you are going to change on the pages of your site, this also means that anything that you did not specify an editable region for in your template will NOT shift when you create pages from it.
You have had a few bits of good advice on this so I hope you manage to sort it out, Dreamweaver makes a bad name for itself with people who dabble in it as it has so many little pitfalls that even the help files of tutorials won't help you with, just years of grinding away with it will get you there but trust me it is still industry standard for a reason, it is fantastic when you get to grips with it!
Try and find a tutorial on youtube by a guy who goes under the name of Tutvid.com. I learned so much from him in the early days. In future you want to be looking at another simple way of building called css layout which is far less prone to layout shifts and is much better for optimisation and actually being found by the search engines.
To be honest, although I am a web developer during my day job, it has been a long time since I worked with tables, they are a bit old hat but if they work for you they are reasonable simple to maintain and generate simple code.
I am not sure what level you are at with building so I may have given you lots of information on stuff you already knew so if I have then I am sorry.
I hope I have been of some help, get back to me if you need any more advice.
Best of luck!
Jarvis
