Yet more questions on backup (and restore)

I have MOSS 2007 installed in single server farm.
I installed a full copy of SQL 2005 and followed the farm installation steps.  I only have one server and I do not anticipate
having multiple servers in the farm in this century.

I have looked at the WSS Operations manual concerning backup of WSS using STSADM
and the Technical Reference for STSADM -backup
Both entries can be located from the following URL
(http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/WSS/en/library/dec1c405-b54b-4c1b-976f-3fa6d814cda51033.mspx?mfr=true)

I must say that they are less then clear or complete.

The Operations manual discussing doing Farm Backups, Web Application Backups, Site Collection Backups and Database Backups.

The Technical Reference discussing a Site Collection Backup and a Catastrophic Backup with the difference being a -URL or a -item
switch.

My basic question is, do I have to do each of these (Farm Backups, Web Application Backups, Site Collection Backups and Database
Backups) backups separately or does a Farm Backup backup everything like its name implies.

My further question is about customizations and 3rd party things.  In a previous post "Full backup and restore" in this group
there was discussion of when to install customizations during the restore process.  It also indicated that it might be good to
save all of the 12 subdirectory.

I have installed several of the Microsoft supplied templates.  I have created 2 new site templates (by doing create template from
this site) from sites I created.  Are these customizations?  If so, what do I need to do to save them?  I looked in the
SiteTemplates directory and I see the administrator templates that I installed, but I do not see my 2 new site templates.

As far a the Configuration Database is concerned.  I am assuming that it can be backed up by Stsadm but it is mentioned that it is
difficult to restore, so should it be backed up using SQL backup tools?  If so, what if anything is necessary to ensure the backup
of the sharepoint and SQL data is consistent?

Thanks
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Roy Chastain
KMSYS Worldwide, Inc.
http://www.kmsys.com