Your content makes your site, not the design, unless your site is about graphics design. People will remember your site for the good articles, not some fancy layout. Too much emphasis on the web is placed on how sites look, while next to none is on the content.

GetRichSlowly doesn’t have a memorable layout. At all. Yet, it is a VERY succesful blog. So I challenge the arguement that you need to focus on making it super fancy. More importance should be placed on readers being able to find the material to read as easily as possible. I totally feel this new layout contributes to that effort better.

Remember, people with extraordinarily strong opinions are usually the ones to speak out in feedback forums like this… your average reader (which makes up the majority) may have a completely different view than the small minority that voices its opinion.

A poll could be a good idea to gather a larger sample of feedback?

There’s no reason you can’t make this an ongoing project. Over time, work on it and make it more unique, but this is a good foundation. I’d like to see some more graphics but I think it’s WAY more readable. The old site did seem a bit messy to me.

Perhaps a good start would be to change the colors a bit. That would break away from the “over-used” theme without actually being any real… work

It would be cool to get some good financial widgets on here too!