I do a lot of my freelance work with drupal these days.
I recently came across the need to significant modify the header area of a site…
I had to figure out how to get this to work, but someone else did most of the labor.
Drop this in your template.php file
function THEMENAME_preprocess_page(&$variables) {
if ($variables['node']->type == "my_content_type") {
$variables['template_files'][] = 'page-node-my_content_type';
}
}
replace “THEMENAME” with the name of your theme, and now you can create “page-node-NODETYPE.tpl.php” files to your hearts content.
I got this from http://drupal.org/node/223440
(yeah, now I have to migrate my blog to drupal