The instructions are a bit vague, I agree. The plan is to make all of this adjustable from the user interface, where it will be simpler. But to be specific:

1) In the ss-left.php file you’ll see this line:

if( $count++ > 6 ) break;

Change the “6″… currently it shows from 0 to 6 (7 total) articles.

2) For the link to the articles page, you need to change the ss-footer.php file. However, you can actually do that in the user interface. Go to the Page Layout tab and press the Edit footer button. There’s a textbox at the bottom of the dialog where you can add additional stuff to the footer. You can just enter something like

<a href=”articles.html”>Articles About Widgets<a>

there.