Yeah, I can agree it gets confusing at times. The problem is that not all interface authors follow the same "rules". Profit, for example, is set up to be extracted to your EQ2 folder - others need you to make a folder manually and unzip there. Etc... The basic premise never change, though:
1. The game reads the eq2.ini to see what folder the interface mods are located in.
2. The game reads the modified interface files from said folder and displays them in-game.
And that's it, basically. Make/edit the eq2.ini and make sure the mods are located in the proper folder.
The one recommendation I would give, though, is to find a nice file manager. I use a great one called "Total Commander" (previously Windows Commander) that is reminiscent of the old Norton Commander if anyone remember that one hehe. Check out
www.ghisler.com for info and you'll see the basic features it has. It makes thing like this (and any other file managing for that matter) soo much easier to do - and grasp. Using the Windows Explorer thingy is totally unintuitive (to me at least) and tends to complicate things even more hehe.