Sample website designs for inspiration?
 

The following sites have interesting appeal, for one reason or another. Notes have written next to many of the sites, to point out the feature or design quality that garnered its inclusion on this list. The sites are listed in no particular order. Note that the sites may have changed since originally bookmarked! For that reason, screen shots were taken, and have been added as replies to this post.

• http://bauhouse.ca - B&W thumbnails that mouseover to color, multiple systems of navigation/sub-navigation (quality look, maybe not the best for user interface traffic control)
• http://www.infectedfx.net - WordPress site, nifty folder/OS style navigation for categories at the top of the page
• 123copydvd.com - nice colors, fonts, rounded corners, sizes of content, could be turned into a WordPress site, if it's not one already
• http://www.vso-software.fr - in addition to having great software, the design of this site is clean, light, and well organized. This too, could be a WordPress site, with some custom theme work
• http://www.siteuptime.com - lots of nice gradients, muted colors easy on eyes, light without being white, good font balance and logos
• http://ideas.thenest.com - bright and cheerful colors, female-friendly layout and theming
• http://www.cpanel.net - nice "web 2.0" look to gradients and corners, nice use of grays
• http://www.focusonthefamily.com
• http://www.mentalfloss.com/magazine - great Wordpress ideas, large margin separation of sections
• http://www.shopzilla.com
• http://admissions.nebrwesleyan.edu
• http://www.peachpit.com - really nice WordPress potential design, great color scheme orange, clean design, balance of black text against lighter sidebar text
• http://www.rubiconproject.com - nice use of darks, curves and bottom-page display presentation for featured/showcase objects
• http://www.bronco.co.uk - gorgeous colors, use of blue, accent color underline in upper navbar, good spacing and horizontal graphics
• http://store.steampowered.com - dark gamer style, but without typical gaudiness, good use of gray, black and blue graphics and palette
• http://www.thenest.com - nice use of "earth shades", mix of light brown, desaturated lime green, and medium blue turquoise shades.

bauhause.ca

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infectedfx.net

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123copydvd.com

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vso-software.fr

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siteuptime.com

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thenest.com

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cpanel.com

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focusonthefamily.com

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shopzilla.com

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admissions.nebrwesleyan.edu

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peachpit.com

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rubiconproject.com

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bronco.co.uk

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Another really good layout, good color scheme, nice sidebar/widget items.
Good spacing. Comic-caption style H-tag headers.

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XOWii.com has a nice combo of red and gray.

However, I'd take notice that the site uses a larger-than-1024 page width, which is stupid. At least a third or more of all web users still have 1024x768 (or lower! yikes!) screen resolutions, and nobody likes a site with left-right scroll bars. Most people just leave badly-designed sites, myself included.

Flash is overused, and the site loads slow as molasses, too, even on an average broadband connection.

But this post is about the colors, and it at least did something well!

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Full sized higher quality PNG in attached RAR.

This trio of sites has great shading and colors, very colorful without looking like a box of 8 crayons.

NOTE TO ALL MEN: Don't let the ladies catch you looking at these sites, else they might get the wrong ideas! (Marriage, new house, kids!) :p

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store.steampowered.com

Good use of darks -- black, gray palettes and blues, plus simple gradients and linear graphics.
Lacks typical gaudiness found on amateur gamer sites.

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