I've been trying to make a few appearance changes to my roster, but I've had no sucess thus far. My understanding is that this all must be done within the styles.css file, correct? Unfortunately, this file is extremely long and I'm not even sure what to look for.

Specifically, I want to change the background color to something arbitrary.
I thought this section was the one I wanted:

body {
font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;
background:#000000;
color:#ffffff;
font-size:12px;
}

but color changes here seem to do nothing at all.

Can anyone help me out? I'm not that familiar with php or css, but I'm pretty good at tinkering.

did you make that change in the roster/css/styles.css file?

I had to delete the image file wowroster_bg.jpg for the background changes in the stylesheet to take effect.

If you clear the background image setting in Roster Config -> Display Settings, it removes the background image