Welcome to the Q&A Forum

javascript character data, processor, it show's old and new browsers how to read your xhtml content, old browsers will read as html, but javascript isn't readed by crawlers

Thanks Joel, I shall give that a go, and see if that does the trick. Thank you!!

To answer part 2, if your CSS knowledge is advanced or at least really good, there aren't any design limitations. There are several themes designed for specifically for customization (weaver, blankslate) .  Add to that a couple cool plugins (jShortcodes) and you've got total control of the look.