Create new website design for www.DirectSellingEntrepreneur.com (Wordpress)

http://www.DirectSellingEntrepreneur.com

Site is being created to help promote/support the "Direct Selling Entrepreneur Certificate Program", which is a thirty-hour training program to help individuals grow their small business that they own and operate in the direct selling industry. The target individuals are either new to the industry or experienced in direct selling. In either case, they are a sales professional who is affiliated with a direct selling company and interested in operating a successful, small business.

The training program is being introduced in cities throughout the US in coordination with community colleges and community support organizations who support small business and entrepreneurship. Pilot programs getting ready to launch in mid-October initially being provided at no charge in three metro areas; Syracuse NY, Boston MA, Minneapolis MN.

There are two principal partners behind this new training program:

Direct Selling Education Foundation (DSEF):
As the goodwill ambassador of the direct selling industry, DSEF proudly provides and supports programming to engage, educate and empower consumers. DSEF supports research and education programs that are expanding knowledge and understanding of the fundamental principles of direct selling. The DSEF Women’s Initiative promotes personal leadership skills and entrepreneurial thinking, which allows women to maximize their contributions to the success of organizations, endeavors and communities. DSEF is affiliated with the Direct Selling Association (DSA) which serves as the national trade association of the leading firms that manufacture and distribute goods and services sold directly to consumers (businesses like Pampered Chef, Avon, Herbalife, Amway, Mary Kay, Melaleuca, NuSkin, PartyLite, Shaklee, Kirby and hundreds more).

National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship (NACCE):
Fosters economic development by serving as the hub for the dissemination and integration of knowledge and successful practices regarding entrepreneurship education and student business incubation. As a membership association, NACCE helps community colleges nationwide link their traditional role of workforce development with entrepreneurial development.

A rough mockup/draft has been put online at http://www.directsellingentrepreneu…s.com/dse/

http://www.DSEF.org
As one of the partner companies and sponsors of this new site, I feel their website is clean and easy to navigate - and I would consider this a minimum standard (from a look & feel perspective) for the new site DirectSellingEntreprenur.com - but I'm open to seeing any and all ideas.

Custom WordPress Theme for a new site http://www.DirectSellingEntrepreneur.com. Goal is to make it an attractive welcome page and encourage people to sign up/register for a future program. Would like to include a place for Registered Participants to log in to download materials, leave feedback comments, etc.
Would like to have a place for a Program Administrator login that the teachers/trainers can use to view participant profiles, read feedback comments, etc.

As a total novice trying to do this myself, I have created a mock up and initial attempt of putting a site together with WordPress at:
http://www.directsellingentrepreneu…s.com/dse/

This should give an idea of the final content that will be on the site. What's not there yet is:
1. A place for people to sign up/register for an upcoming program
2. A place for current program participants to log in to the site and download activity files in PDF format

Please note that the graphics uploaded were created as part of the training materials development being used in the program. The program backers would appreciate seeing the designs make use of some or all of these existing design elements/graphics.

Initial rough layout is created in WordPress - at the recommendation of a friend due to "ease of updating by the site owner" or someone like myself doing it for them. I've never used WordPress before this and found it rather clunky to navigate and get it to behave as desired - which prompted this design contest in hopes that it will result in a much more attractive, functional and easy to update design.

I have updated the design brief to indicate that I'm most interested in a WordPress Theme design/layout. I've not used WordPress before, so really don't know what other specs to ask for at this time - i.e., 2-column vs 3-column, etc. But, I can say that the site is NOT going to be a blog site. It will be a website for promoting the program and registering participants, giving participants a place to download electronic activity worksheets, etc.