Good web design practice with HTML & CSS

I’ve read many tutorials on web design and have come across many different ways to create websites - but I was just wandering how people would go about designing this site from a best practices point of view and was interested to know peoples thoughts.

Please see JPEG attached.

I plan on making the content not scalable.

Would you create a single background image in a page sized div and then have absolute divs for placing the information over the top.

Or would you slice the images up and place them in divs/tables?

There is the issue of a drop shadow around the edge (not my design) - would it be worth looking into 9 slice scaling?

I’m a graphic designer and my first thought is to have a single background image and then have all the content in absolute divs over the top - would there be issues with this method.

Just wandering what the standard conventions and preferences might be.

Thanks for any input.