Redesign of blog hosting platform home page - $500

Redesign for http://unblog.fr/ (site named "Un blog, des blogs"), popular blog hosting platform (60000 blogs registered), in french (don't worry language is not an issue for the contest). Looking for something simple and clean, yet more professional looking than the current site.

unblog.fr

Tagline:
none

Desired Color Scheme:
see description

Desired Style:
see description

Accepted File Formats:
HTML/CSS/js + PSD

unblog.fr is a general blog hosting platform, providing french users with wordpress-powered blogs. It has existed for 8 months with the current design which i made myself (I'm a lousy designer as you can see). I've never had the time to make it more stylish/professional, and finally figured I should leave this to a professional for optimal results.

So, I want a new design for the homepage, which ideally would be easily adapted to the following subpages:
Blog entries sub pages (sample http://unblog.fr/2007/01/23/quatre-…lannuaire/ )
Directory ( http://unblog.fr/annuaire/ )
Forums ( http://unblog.fr/forums/ )

However the scope of this contest is just the home page.

What must appear on the page:

Logo -> currently an icon and the site name in impact font. Doesn't have to be modified, although you are free to resize the icon and font, or change the font to something more original although this will need to make the whole logo an image. Note however I want to keep the icon in its current form, and the logo must only consist of the icon and text.

A search area (currently at top right)

A navigation area (currently at top left) with 9-11 links.

A welcome / create a blog section (currently at center top). Must be prominent and clearly visible as it is right now.

News section with 2 latest blog posts excerpts.

Meet them section with 4 random users listed along with avatars.

Forums section with latest 5 forum posts

Directory section with 20 cats and counts

Latest articles section (8-12 articles listed)

Popular daily posts (8-12 articles listed)

Extra sections (currently on the left) :
- last updated blogs (8-10 listings)
- most active authors (8-10 listings)
- most commented blogs (8-10 listings)
- popular themes (optional, I may get rid of this if it doesn't fit anywhere in the layout, they're just here currently cause i wanted more images on the home page).
- microstats (total number of blogs, posts, comments).

New section to add: Tags (with a tagcloud). I'd prefer it to be a "main section" rather than a "column section" if that makes any sense in the new design.

Colors: the logo being blue yellow and red the design should adapt to this. While I'd like to keep this combination of colours, you may want to use more pastel tones of these colours if you feel the current ones are too saturated. In such case, you'll find the psd with current logo and background icons for the left column background here :
http://www.creerunblog.fr/morepolygons.psd

Background: has to be clear for the text areas in the page, ideally white, or close.

I'm looking for something joyful, fun, simple and clear, not too image intensive (no stock photos or image header). I'm sure you've seen plenty of good-looking blog hosting/community platforms you may get inspiration from. There's a lot of information to display so the layout is quite important. You have no boundaries here, I don't have requirements in terms of columns, headers and stuff (keep in mind subpages will have to be adapted too though).

Fixed width for 1024 screens would be optimal.

Regarding text, it doesn't matter of course if you don't speak french. You can either reuse text found on the current page, or just use lorem ipsum / english stuff as long as it's clear what information has to go in what area of the design.

There could very well be more work for the winner if i'm happy with the design and how things go after the contest.

Delivery: I expect sliced HTML/CSS/js + PSD. Ideally xhtml 1.0 transitional, but I'm not a validation nazi (I won't run a validator on the code delivered, however properly formed HTML, lowercase tags and doublequoted attributes are necessary).

Paying via paypal.