what if we already have an existing site and want to use this template? installing the quickstart package will over write everything on the existing site? correct?
what solutions/resources are available to those who dont want to use the quickstart?
for instance, i'm having trouble figuring out how to get the social, copyright modules to populate from the fields in the template configuration page... jf slideshow is also not displaying images correctly.
You should install quickstart as testpage, only to see how is something configured. This is the way how to edit something what already exist. Quickstart is complete joomla installation, not only template. You must try also to understand joomla.