welcome to macs!!
here's what comes to mind - first your 'public' folder is not for storing pics. that is what your 'pictures' folder is for. public is for file sharing and anything in there needs to be in a format that can be downloaded.like a .sit or .bin. You can use drop stuff which is part of stuffit expander to do this.
i am not sure about this next part, but i think you also need to go to homepage and publish your public page. there are style choices available. you may need to set up an entrance or index page to be able to do this as well.
i am assuming you are connecting with idisk thru your menu and mounting it on your HD. then copying the files you want to the specific folders required. after this process, you can point your browser to itools > homepage and set your site up. Unfortunately, ie is the most reliable for working with itools so you might want to launch it for this task. I think omniweb now works pretty good with it, but someone else would have to verify that.
