confused about flashing roms, SD partitioning, etc..

[petermg]

Ok, so I rooted my HERO, has the Amon Ra 1.5x recovery image on it. I like it. But I'm a bit confused now. When do I need to WIPE my phone? I mean some ROMs require this before flashing and others don't?

Then when partitioning the SD card, upgrading the ext2 to ext3, should I do this?

You see last night I upgraded from Android 1.5 stock to fresh 2.1.1 and a bunch of my apps stopped working, so I restored my nandroid backup and am back at 1.5 until I have a better understanding of what the heck I'm doing. I've been spending a lot of time reading and am still rather unclear on many things.

Any help is humbly appreciated. Such an android noob!

I was in the WINMO scene for about a year and a half ...