Looking for some help…

Hey everybody!

I am new to the whole WordPress situation, but from what I understand and from what I’ve seen just toying around with it, I see that it’s quite the invention.

Anyway, long story short – I’m a journalist and a couple of my buddies are as well. We’re looking to setup a website (and by the looks of WordPress, nearly everything we want to incorporate can be done with WP), but we’re seriously lacking in a design focus and the time or ability to make it look just so.

Basically, I’m wondering if anyone in these forums might have any experience in the matter or enjoys making designs. Our budget is tight but isn’t nonexistent, but these are essentially the basics of what we’re looking for:

– a main page with the newest posts (about 4 maybe) in shortened form (a couple of lines or so) and a “read more” link or something along those lines.

– a sidebar with a separate link for each individual writer and their newest posting

– a link system at the top which essentially has links to the different author sections and a reviews section, faq, contact, about, etc.

– a fairly professional looking design (thinking in dark grey if possible) that can be implemented onto our server easily. I’m not totally retarded, I have installed WordPress and have been playing with it, but the editing of templates is not only tedious but I really get lost in it easily.

– basically we’re looking to simply be able to post an editorial and have it update everywhere it needs to – on the main page, on the sidebar, on the author page itself, etc, without us having to do too much in the way of legwork.

I think that’s about it, but we could talk more if anyone is interested. If not, could you point me in the right direction for editing themes and whatnot? Maybe a mentor might work? I don’t really know, but we’re all really excited to get started, so any help at all will be greatly appreciated.

Take care everyone!

– Adam