Ok, so I have my texture working (I'm trying to use sand for islands), and I see it in my game. But, other people in my group who use the same esp can't see it. I archived the dds file in the landscape/textures folder, and I thoughy that would fix it, but it didn't. Any tips?

Upload it to nexus, the CK archive tool is hit or miss (usually miss). While I have been lucky enough to avoid any problems thus far, a lot of people have been having problems getting it to work.
I assume that you're trying to add a new texture to the game rather than replace a vanilla texture?

right, that's what i'm trying to do.

I'd love to know how you got the texture in and sorted the distant land stuff for it, I havent tried since Oblivion and will be getting into this soon.

I would also love to know do this, that is just getting a new landscape texture in the CK, not replacing an old one. It feels like this should be easy, but I'm definitely missing something...

Ive started making headway into distant desert rock and near up textures. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TAk1yZYdlew

I figured out how to add new textures
Looks promising with the desert, hope I will get to this point soon too. Working on new woodland texture, hope they will look ok when I'm done.

Still working on the desert cliffs, mountains and so forth. Some really nice effects and improvements to the LOD issues. LOD CAN address 512x512 texture maps so LOD can be tricked by the CK into using higher quality meshes and textures for LOD.