I want to use miranda instead of trillian because i'm tired of not being able to use visual styes i want because there's no trillian skin to match . The problem is, and i don't know about you guys, but i find miranda to be the most frustrating program ever! . I understand you're supposed to use plugins like clist nicer+ but once i install them i don't know the first thing to do. Does anyone know of any good how tos or tutorials on how to get miranda looking all spiffy? Any help would be better than how far i've gotten!

Yes, just look at the guides forum her in Neowin or the Miranda CUstomization Topic.