Don't do what I just did

I decided that I was going to change the background of my blog which then escalated to changing the entire HTML for the template itself. I spent about an hour searching for a template I liked and after running into several dead ends with either codes that didn't work or .txt files that I couldn't read, I finally found a site that required that you upload the .xml file rather than copy and paste HTML. When I did that step, Blogger informed me that my widgets would be deleted. I figured it would only take 15 or so minutes to redo my widgets, so I said OK. For some reason, the preview works, but my Blogger site just shows the standard black background template. After about another hour of frustration, I finally reverted back to my old blog by copying and pasting my old template from an email I sent to myself in the very event something like this would happen (clever, eh?) Well, now the preview looks like my old blog, but when I actually open my site, its just the black background!!! Argh! I can't deal with this right now.