Re: Site-Design / improving Site-Logic by colors ?
I don’t understand question 3.
While colour is of course a huge aspect of design and can make the difference between a confusing page and a rational page or a readable page and an unreadable page… I’m not convinced that changing background colors or navigation bar colors does much to improve one’s sense of place on a website. It might actually confuse people. You are assuming they will form the connection that green = profile… blue = members… etc. But it may be just as likely that they will say to themselves “What the… why do the background colours keep changing?”.
Some things people have come to understand and even expect perhaps are left hand navigation bars and breadcrumbs. However, that really only makes sense on a site that’s all about hierarchy. Sites like BuddyPress and Facebook etc. are not organized in that way… they are more about functionality and activity and relationships. There’s no deep hierarchy. Although there could be within your posts and pages (the Blog section).
Anyway, if you’re concerned about them knowing there they are… perhaps just redesign the main navigation bar to stand out more. Also, instead of two side-by-side bars (like on the Profile) a single bar with break-out navigation would be more conventional. All of the above would require (ideally) good design skills, HTML/CSS, maybe a little PHP… and an understanding of usability.
