Crap. Stupid mistake. I misunderstood the sites I've been looking at like
here and
here. I always end up with a fixed footer with the page content scrolling underneath the footer and it looks terrible. Using position:fixed or position:absolute doesn't seem to allow the footer to move down when the page content extends beyond the footer.
So maybe I need to insert a wrapper container around the header and main content and then the footer.....back to the drawing board....