cant change the user login form

Ive been reading up on how to change the positioning on the user login form.
Problem is, some documents are supposed to be used with drupal 4 only :(
the document that I saw that had the login to position it at the top was here:
http://www.nicklewis.org/node/845

I just cant get any sort of wording that I want to put above the login form like 'hello world' to appear.
I am trying to get this to work with drupal 6 and having no such luck. the information I am currently using to get the login test change is from drupal here:
http://drupal.org/node/19855

the info file works. my theme is called: 'your_theme' just to make sure no one gets confused :) heres the contents of the template.php and user_login.tpl.php files:

template.php:

function your_theme_theme() {
  return array(
    'user_login' => array(
      'template' => 'user-login',
      'arguments' => array('form' => NULL),
    ),
    // other theme registration code...
  );
}

function your_theme_theme_preprocess_user_login(&$variables) {
  $variables['intro_text'] = t('This is my awesome login form');
  $variables['rendered'] = drupal_render($variables['form']);
}

user_login.tpl.php:

print $intro_text;

I am not sure if this is a problem, when I try to select my theme in the menu to select it, afterwards I get the default white screen as its not fully done of course. but I get these two separate messages:

* warning: include_once(./) [function.include-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/content/v/i/p/nameofdatabase/html/includes/theme.inc on line 156.

* warning: include_once() [function.include]: Failed opening './' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/local/php5/lib/php') in /home/content/v/i/p/nameof datbase/html/includes/theme.inc on line 156.

any help in the right direction will be most grateful

-Mallet