I am no expert but when I tried to setup your hack I could not change the colors to easily and apart from that the way the tables were set up meant the colors were not going to look right anyway.
As I say I am no expert but I simply used the code below to create the tables and allow the colors to be easily adjusted, it fits perfectly into my index page.
I am not saying your hack was not good, it just did not fit well in my site and I came up with this to make it easier.
You can see my welcome box
Here
Sorry if the code is all over the place, but I did this in a hurry.
Code:
<table width="$stylevar[tablewidth]" border="1" bordercolor="#000000" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="$stylevar[outerborderwidth]">
<tr>
<td BGCOLOR="#780000" height="21"><center><b>Welcome to UK Debt <center><b></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td BGCOLOR="#CCCCCC"><font color="#000000"><center>Welcome to our site, I hope you enjoy your stay!</center></font></td>
</tr>
</table>
<BR>