coppermine-gallery.com/forum

Basically, what I'm trying to do is get rid of the "Random Files" and "Latest Additions" right now. I also soon will be editing the solid HTML for the pages, specifically the home page. (For example, the boxes on the home page listing the albums, I want to change the core HTML of that.) I've looked into the templates, but what I'm looking for is simply included by putting {GALLERY} in it. I've searched all I could to find the file that changes the {GALLERY} to the actual HTML, but I can't find it. What I'm trying to do is similar to editing the templates of vBulletin or IPB. I thought I remembered seeing a similar feature in 1.4.x, but I couldn't find it.

So where can I edit the core HTML?

most of the core html can be found in the sample theme.php
simply copy what you want to edit into your custom themes theme.php
http://documentation.coppermine-gallery.net/en/theme_create.htm#theme_create

you can remove the meta albums easily in the configuration.
http://documentation.coppermine-gallery.net/en/configuration.htm#admin_album_list_content