I've been told I can use PHP and MySQL to design a web site template that I can maintain administrative control over. This template needs to be repeated to dozens of users (and different domain names) that can maintain content management over specific areas. And I can make changes to all sites at one time by working with the template. Is this possible. And where do I go to learn how to bring this to life?

PHP and MySQL is certainly the easiest answer to your problem and I can help you with the PHP but not the MySQL as, as of yet I have not bothered to play around with that not having ever needed it.

There is no quick easy route to learning PHP apart from getting yourself a good manual and playing with it. Of course it helps if you have an Apache set up on your local machine so you can test pages using the http://localhost/ route.

To get a good PHP guide go to http://www.php.net/download-docs.php
For a good Apache system go to http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html

The PHP guide/reference includes sections on MySQL etc...

Use of MySQL is not pre-requisite and I have always managed with using *.dat files (but maybe that's because my brain feels overloaded at the moment anyway).

If you need any help, pleased to see what I can do.