General Questions (first Time)

I am working on customizing the blog page to make it look better and better match my site.

This is the effect I am going for:


For the blog banner, I will create that with a Joomla module, so ignore that.

Down the left side widgets, would those be Joomla widgets, easyblog widgets or a combination of both?

I will also need an intro image, excerpt and read more button. I would like to hide social media (until I am inside the blog post) and hide the thick black easyblog menu item that comes by default.

Basically, how do I customize easyblog? I am looking though the documentation and I can't find what I am looking for.

Thanks!