Choosing a template

A correct template should have in its XML description file the different positions that can be used to insert modules:

 	<positions>
		<position>left</position>
		<position>right</position>
		<position>debug</position>
		<position>syndicate</position>
	</positions>

Front Page

The link (menu item) to the front page has to be marked with the "Default" attribute. You can only have one such link. After that, in the menu item you can change the layout of the front page. Usually it will use the special front page blog layout where you get abstracts of items.

This plugin is not bad, but has a really annoying problem: the original content (managed by Joomla) is not synced to its corresponding translation in JoomFish. So if you create in English and in Joomla a new article (default language being English), the corresponding JoomFish english translation is not automatically created. You have to manually copy it. If you later update the original via Joomla, the update is not synced to the JoomFish translation. Very painful.
Once installed, all content served come from JoomFish translations (but you can define a fallback language for translations that don't exist).