LostInNetwork

Are you sure that WordPress is the best tool for that? Perheaps something with built-in access control would suit you better. You should take a look at Joomla and Drupal to see if they have the features you need.

Now back to WP…

The Category Visibility plugin lets you limit the visibility of select post categories (by user), but it can be circumvented. Then there is the Group Restriction plugin that does the same for pages. These are not nearly a perfect solution, and as you charge for the content, they might be out of question.

Came back to see what other people think.

A few more thoughts…

The dual coloured “Recent Entries” and “Else Where” look beautiful.

You could consider using some javascript plugin, that would float the sidebar (vertically), and make it follow when one scrolls up and down the page. Try “Sidebar slider”: http://aranea.zuavra.net/index.php/27/

I am using it and it works well. You need to add a few hooks in your theme files (at least one in the header and one in each moving part), but it isn’t too complicated for a non-newbie. I have installed it on (both columns of my two column) sidebar, and on the main content too. On the other hand, leaving out these kinds of tricks yields simple and calm pages. I cannot tell if the slider would actually improve the page or not, but it’s worth a try.

Ok, let’s see…

I like the font, the spacing, the shades of blue, the green tag at the bottom…

I try to be really mean next 🙂

It looks like a fruit salad. Are you aiming at a heavy blue or a light green look? I like the green, white and light blue elements. They give a fresh and light look. But when you combine those with the heavy, dark blue and purple… ouch. In my opinion these two color worlds do not fit together. This breaks the coherence, the structure is lost, and the page becomes difficult to read. Maybe you could keep the green elements of the sidebar, but that second header/menu is a little bit too much. It is actually the headers/menus that I find most troubling. There’s too much stuff up there. Simplify.

You also use two types of lists: numbered and bulleted. Choose one. Simplify.

The green element at the bottom right corner seems to work with this blue theme. But what’s that green line slightly above it? Or the “Older entries” graphics? In my opinion there’s too many sorts of colours there. And the blue striped lines or “older entries” are not found *anywhere* else. Don’t use something just once. Try to apply similar looks throughout the page. Simplify.

The purple menubar changes colour in the middle, and there’s a strange “white well” at the bottom of the page. Simplify.

The content matters. If it’s interesting, then it is. I am not capable of evaluating the contents of this site, though. Not my field of expertise.

If you want to make it more appealing, then add some polls. Polls that are interesting. Forget about information there. Ask questions, that members WANT to answer and read. The democracy2 plugin is one way of achieving polls. Recommended.

If your page contains enough information, and if you manage to organize it’s regular updating, then it could benefit from a forum, too. Creating forums is difficult, though. You need to get a fair amount of active members right in the beginning, or the forum will die even before it was born.

http://www.im-web-gefunden.de/2007/01/28/wordpress-21-role-manager-plugin/