will vb create a .css file for you
 

instead of ingesting all of the CSS code within the page, how can I get it to create a <link> to the stylesheet, similar to how this forum accomplishes its styling?

You should go to vBulletin Options > Style & Language Settings and switch the Store CSS Stylesheets as Files? setting to Yes.

You must CHMOD clientscript/vbulletin_css folder to 0777 first.

question about this tho....

If I store css as file and edit the template css via admin cp, it creates a whole new file.

How can I either manually assign a css file to the template, ignoring any other css file, or tell VB to only update 1 css file?

thanks