Scratch

MathWizz wrote:

You nee this so badly.

I don't think the Internet Explorer one is needed o.o the shadow works for me fine, magically. (I am using IE9 too)

RedRocker227 wrote:

I've changed the colours, I personally think it looks worse now but at least it's not too bright.

Still hurts my eyes. Maybe... Light blue?

nice job!  I recommend using a logo instead of just plain text for the site header (redrocker227).  Very nice styling as well, very good job!   I love the colors, they're nice and unique!  I'd also like to recommend using RSS for the news bar.  It may be a little hard, but it's a good learning experience.  Perhaps a news page to contain all the news as well?  You could install like a blog plugin and add all the latest news there, if not just hard-coding it in yourself.  If you have a lot of free time, and want something to do, go for coding the blog part yourself.  It'll be a lot of fun!  For the sake of organization, I like to use sub-domains instead of directories, just because it frees up url space, and nobody likes to type a lot.  (I do, though.)  Try adding a favicon, too!  I like the box shadow, that was a nice touch.  For the sake of discoverability, I recommend having links be a different color from the rest of the content, that way when someone is skimming the content for links, they can easily spot what they are looking for.  since you are using HTML5 it looks like, there are a lot of new useful tags that can replace the div tags you are using.  For the sidebar, you can use <aside>.   For sections of content, you can use <section>, and for a complete article, you can use <article>.  For the header/navigation,  you can use <header>, and then a nested <nav>.  Just makes the code a bit easier to read, that's all.  For the footer, you can use <footer>.

It looks quite good.

Ah, much better with the new background. 

I agree with archmage, it's great for a first website, especially since it's all handcoded. However, having a box floating in the middle of the screen is a bit plain, so try adding more variety. We all know the internet has enough boxes.