A Brand New Website for Women

Female Forum is going to be a brand new website for women. It will offer a wealth of articles related to women's issues and incorporate a forum for women to get together and chat about whatever they like. You do NOT need to design a forum skin for this contest.

FemaleForum.com

Desired Color Scheme:
Use the colours in the logo, or adapt the logo to your preferred color scheme.

Desired Style:
Professional, easy to use, clear, approachable, friendly

Accepted File Formats:
Layered Formats (.psd or .tiff)

Female Forum is going to be a brand new online community. I am NOT looking for a forum skin - I am looking for a template for the home page of the site, which should be clean, professional and user-friendly.

The site will be positioned similarly to iVillage.com, yet the design must be completely different to theirs - one of the reasons I am creating Female Forum is because iVillage is overwhelming to the majority of casual female Web users.

I am looking for a design that is immediately appealing on first sight. The home page must draw attention both to our latest/featured articles, and really encourage people to visit the forums. Remember - this site is not just a forum. It is more of an article based website with an integrated forum.

The homepage should therefore, reflect this - I want to see strong calls to action to the forum. A clear area with featured threads/posts would be a good way of achieving this - we just need to ensure people see the site as a community, not just an article based website.

I am a big fan of clear, crisp minimalist designs - but don't go too minimalist; I want warmth and character in the design. It must be extremely easy for a new visitor to immediately understand what the site is about, and how they can get to the content they want.

The homepage should have links to articles, which will fall into the following categories:

Pregnancy & Parenting
Health & Diet
Love & Relationships
Fashion & Lifestyle
Hobbies & Leisure
Work & Careers

Of course, it goes without saying that there also needs to be a link to the forum!

The homepage also needs to have space for a horizontal 728x90 ad banner, along with space for vertical ads (perhaps along the side of the page?)

Female Forum will be targeted at women 30+, but will be open to all female adults. The site design needs to be clean, professional and rather minimalist, but warm, friendly and approachable at the same time. We are aiming for the site to be easy for people to use - particularly those who aren't Internet 'savvy'.

I already have a logo designed - feel free to incorporate this into your design. You will find a copy of the logo at:

http://www.femaleforum.com/images/logo.gif

Feel free to resize the logo as you see fit.

Female Forum is going to be a huge, successful website. The winning designer will have their work displayed to a huge number of people on a daily basis.

The winning designer must be willing and able to sign a contract passing full rights to the design over to myself upon payment.

I think that just about covers everything - if you have any questions, please let me know.

I have been involved in a number of successful contests here at SitePoint - feel free to do your research to be assured you will be dealing with a professional in this contest. I always offer timely feedback, and look forward to seeing what you can come up with.