just bought a 99 civic ex 5 speed the car ran great for a week but then it shut off. I checked the compression and that was good the timing belt was just replaced, the fuel pump is working i can smell fuel in the cylinder

NO Spark at the plug.

What ussually goes up in the distributor of a civic and are there any tricks in removing the distributor or replacing things like the control module or ignition coil HElp

 

check inside the distributor cap and look at the little points they may have some carrosion on them. i would try a tune up with a cap/rotor/some spark plug wires.

 

i would say something in the distributor - coil, module , igniter - it may be cheaper & faster just to pop in a rebuilt one - if thats what it is -
another possibility may be a bad crank sensor - but i think a bad sensor would shut down both spark & fuel - but im not sure