Here are some of the designs I made that never made it out the door. The color scheme pretty much had to be the blue you see now. Though the process of picking colors is a considerably difficult task. Ideally I would like to see a good balance of colors.. I think a few highly contrasting images / colors will bring life to this design.

Old designs that never made it (or were close):
Design 2 (after Dave's initial)
Design 3
Design 5 (after Kevin's very light design, considered as too artsy)
Design 6 (too awkward to use)
Design 7 (menu covers banner ads, not good with flash)
Design 8
Design 9


Designing for this site is a difficult process. You have to take into account many screen resolution sizes, browsers, preferences, etc. And to compound matters.. you have to get 6 very opinionated staff members to come to an agreement on a single design. THEN you need to get the moderators involved and tweak things here and there.. THEN you open it up to the public on a small scale (which was generally pretty successful). THEN you open it up to the public at large, which has been met with quite a few scathing comments. While I'm not totally satisfied with the design that was ultimately applied to the site as a whole, I think it will get there over time. Hope you enjoyed looking through the recycling bin.. =)