OK, let's get the ball rolling...

Yeah, this design was nice for the first two weeks or something but then made my eyes pee blood.

Personally, I would go with a white background based site and focus on the content. Using CSS styling more than graphics. I just think this makes for an easier page to read and would be faster to load. It's also easier to skin, if needed, and easier to swtich around. Splitting the page up with table cells etc... Or by CSS will look good and allow us to display content more efficiently. (I am talking about the main www site here generally)

I agree about the look, thats why I use the white background forum template.

css style can definately look sexy when presented right, definately a good option

Yeah, I'm using the Air template, its just easier to see. I think something along the lines of this template as for colors, like having light colors as the main colors and 1 brighter color or for the focus color.

It's a tough balance to achieve I believe for a Photoshop informational site. Content must definately be front and center--but it's gotta have some bling-bling whiz-bang too.

Are you going to be building a custom CMS for the site, Rich, or were you thinking of using a package, like Expression Engine or Mambo? BTW... Mambo has split--a political rift if you will. I'm putting an info blurb on the News with links if anyone's interested in more info.

More than likely, we'll be doing our own CMS, we have extensive experience with custom backends and prefer to do our own rather than use an off the shelf package, which may not be quite right. We also prefer the flexibility of a custom solution.

If we integrate the forum into the site more, it may mean custom forums too - although I am not sure at this point - so don't panic!!!

BTW if we were going for a off the shelf CMS, Mambo would be a great option.

I dont think were going to have to do a custom forums. What exactly do you want to achieve with integrating the forums into the main site, I'm not sure what you mean. Like just recent posts or hot topic kindof things?

Also, I think the site should be simple and content based, but I do have to agree with malibu... after all we are "masters of photoshop" :p

It would be nice to get some users to post what they think instead of just us mods talking about it ;)

I thought all users here WERE mods? No... huh?

haha at dan and his precious mambo. :P

deker is Derek's evil twin... laughing at those of us still in mourning.

Mambo WILL live again, even if it's "The CMS Formerly Know as Mambo".