I never heard this expression "little coder" 

Why do you call this an issue? You need to change the behavior right?
This is something you need to change in bootstrap
Look at this help:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16214326/bootstrap-dropdown-with-hover

Are you sure? You can not change the order I think.

Welcome to the forum,

Are you looking for Multivendor or Marketplace solution? I can help you. 

For correct display for the fields you need to use right HTML structure of the bootstrap v3.

Try something like this:

<div class="form-group <?php if (${'error_'.$field_name}) echo 'has-error'; ?>">
<label class="control-label col-md-5"><?php echo ${'entry_'.$field_name}; ?></label>
<div class="input-group col-md-7">
    <?php echo $form[$field_id]; ?>
</div>
<span class="help-block"><?php echo ${'error_'.$field_name}; ?></span>
</div>

The rest of your steps are correct.

If you do not see data saved in the order, please double check that your fields are located between <form></form> tags.
Check what data is posted into the controller on the submit.

Thank you for sharing these in details

Hello Heinz and welcome to AbanteCart.

I think 1.2.9 is pretty stable.

Good check list. Thank you.