If I were smart, I would bust out the redesign into three stages: structure, layout, and design.
But, since I’m not awfully, terribly smart, it’s all just one big hodgepodge in my noodle right now. What I think is going to happen is that, once I set a structure, that will be the groundwork for any future designs (I hope). Currently I have five or six layouts, but really it’s only two. One of one idea, and four or five variations on the other idea. As for design, I’ve been lifting pictures of Shanghai left and right through Google, though the Beauties are still a strong possibility. We shall see.
The killer is I have no formal grounding in either coding or design. With coding, this means that I remember a thing is possible (drop-down menus with CSS, e.g.) but don’t really remember how the heck to do it (thank goodness for a list apart). But doing that means going back and figuring out how to code the PHP to present the HTML in a way that the CSS can use for this purpose…
And as to design, with no formal grounding at all, I just keep aiming for the vague ideas in my head, and hoping I can make the result look better.
Oy, my head is swimming.