I found the 'body background' setting in the Admin-Site Settings-Appearance section, though this appears to add the background within the skin.

I am trying to add a black background AROUND the skin; therefore, would I have to modify the skin.css somehow to pull this off? Knowing nothing about skinning, I thought I would ask the experts here. :)

The background of the editor will not be influenced if you use:

#body
{
    background-color: white;
}

btw for the default skin you will have to change the

.pagemaster{

background-color:white;

}

too.

Sebastian, I just tried on the beta2 and it still works.

#body will only apply the color to the page body, not the editor, even if you set the "Editor area css" to dynamic.

The body tag of the IFrame doesn't have an id="body", the pages body tag does.