Text boxes for Article publication

Hi folks,
I am a complete newbie at setting up websites but I have had a large problem dropped into my lap. I have been running a website for some time posting articles onto the site. Unfortunately, the guy who was running the website IT side decided to go home and take his ball (and all the coding) with him. Unfortunately, it has left a lot of readers disappointed and so I thought that I might give it a whirl in replacing the site.

The site was originally made up in Joomla though highly modified. As previously stated, I am a complete Newbie and I could not find a decent tutorial that took me through the process step by step to arrive at what was previously functioning on the site and so I decided to use WordPress as I had found an excellent tutorial on Youtube by Tyler Moore.

The original site functioned by allowing me to produce and format the articles in a comprehensively modified Editor which I then posted to a specific category and then sent as a summary (with a read more button) to the home page. The home page was made up with a 2 column plus (right) side bar with the latest article in a two column wide box and the earlier articles were appended below in single column boxes (up to ten in total) with a link to earlier still articles at the bottom. I have made a mock-up using a free hosting web site at http://peeseebeeb.wix.com/theunituk-org which may give you some idea of what I am looking for.

My problem is finding some WordPress plugins that will help me achieve this. I know that I am asking a lot but what I cannot seem to find are the following.
1. A plugin to fit the text for both the articles and sidebar in boxes as the background graphic obscures some of the text
2. A plugin to provide the layout similar to the example. (I have tried the siteorigin one but cannot work out how to place the side bar)
3. A plugin to load articles and videos into storage and facilitate retrieval.
4. A plugin that will give me facility for ‘read more’ facility and increase the functionality of the text editor
5. A plugin that will allow me to reformat pasted text from html, word, etc.

Failing all of that, perhaps a free template that will fit the bill.

I realise that this is quite comprehensive but I really would appreciate some help.

Many thanks in anticipation

Peter