Uh, I'm looking at your site and uhhhh.... well, how can I put this.... NEEDS HELP! So anyways, I was thinking maybe I could help. Here are some sites that I've done..
www.VirtualTours.com
www.ThriveHigh.com
www.VulcanStuudios.com (coming soon!)
I ussually don't do this for free, but since I wanna see more teen programmers today, I'll help out. Email me at Dan4130@Game-Developer.com

If you'd like to create a layout and post a link to it here, that would be fine. I think most of us are satisfied with the layout we have now, and we're not actively soliciting new ones, so don't expect us to seek you out.

Also, take a look in "Preferences" in the top right corner. You can use another stylesheet which is much more attractive than the default (which I think we should change).

And looking over the links you gave I found that VirtualTours.com is another stupid seeker-site (ie. spam!). ThriveHigh.com isn't appealing to the eye at all. And then there's VulcanStuudios.com (or VulcanStudios.com) which doesn't even have a valid set of DNS records yet, so I wonder why you even bother to put it on as a reference..

Bottom line is.. TPU.org may not be beautiful, but it serves it's primary purpose, and isn't exactly ugly.. Your references were basically, umm, not good.

www.ThriveHigh.com is really pretty ugly, and I validated it too... not nice.

I wouldn't even dare doing that, gian. My brain can't handle that many errors at this hour. :D

Ok. So anyways, what does YOUR site do? What do you offer that no other site offers? I've seen nothing that (if I wanted to be a programmer) could help with telling me what to learn(by the way I am a programmer :)

Well, firstly there's the Quick Starts and a lot of links to other places that can help. Secondly, TPU is not a business, we are not here to "sell" a product that is unique. What we do provide, however, is a common meeting ground for programmers by programmers to answer questions that newbies and not-so-newbies may have.

This is not a new group, we have been at it for a number of years and have gone through dozens of redesigns and restructures. This just happens to be the current iteration which most people find quite acceptable.

If you would like to contribute, you could start by maybe writing a Quick Start guide for something that you know about, or if you can in fact design a better layout ... then design it! But don't tell us our site "NEEDS HELP" without presenting an alternative. Design a new site, and then sent us a link to it, so that everyone can view it and play with it.

I have had many questions answered here...

I like this site because its simple, easy to read, customizable, and gets to the point. I don't think it needs any big revamps.

And Dan4130, your sites are static, this site is not. Do you have much experience in web programming and not just HTML with a WYSIWYG?

VirtualTours is completely pointless, ThriveHigh causes a critical error in IE 5.5, and VulcanStudios is non-existant, got anything else?

I'm guessing he used DreamWeaver for ThriveHigh.. Hehehe..

As for you, Dan4130.. You say you're a programmer, but present nothing but poorly done, static HTML pages, which has nothing to do with programming.

the ultimate insult: unknownlamer.org has a better design. Moo. :) [at least I have valid xhtml 1.0 STRICT]

now all you need is a browser that completley supports the standard, IE? nope. Im sure the mozilla supports it though.

Go to unknownlamer.org...any browser can render it. It is still conformant old-style HTML as well as xhtml. I don't even use CSS. It is a very simple site, all static html and almost no images (unless shirt.unknownlamer.org counts :).

1) Hey, I think the site looks good! 2) Don't expect people to want to talk to you much after you insult their website. Sheesh, common courtesy please.

Web development, even if using things like DHTML, ASP and PHP is still not programming. Its scripting.

I don't know about DHTML, but writing ASP and PHP code is clearly still programming, because you define an order of code execution. (Otherwise, you'd never know how the page you get back would look if it interacted with mutable external resources and such....)

i dunno. I have always considered programming to be the task of writing an application for the operating system. For example: Java is programming. You make applets or applications that can be executed, or interpreted. Javascript is not programming. It allows you to add some math and other things to HTML and is therefore a scripting language. it also cannot be run stand-alone, you must use a browser.Visual basic is programming. The application is either interpreted from witin visual studio or compiled and executed. It is stand alone in executable form. VBA is not programming. It is scripting. VBA allows you to use visual basic code within MS apps such as excel and access. It cannot be used stand alone and must be used within a supporting app.

Also JS and VBA are basically event handlers. that is what a scripting language is, an event handler. This is why i call ASP and PHP scripting, becasue they are only event handlers.

What would you say a scripting language is psion?

A scripting language is still a programming language. Or at least what you are calling a scripting language. A true scripting language would have no built-in language constructs and would merely execute a list of commands in order, relying on external programs to do all of the work (e.g. if would be a program).

You say a programming language has to produce a stand alone program yet java cannot do this, it must be interpreted

PHP and ASP are as much scripting languages as C/C++ are (which ofcourse they aren't).

A programming language does not need to create a standalone executable. There are plenty of interpreted languages. And Java can be compiled to native machine code (see gcj).

Yeah, I agree, I was talking about what metamorphic said.

i didnt say it needed to be able to be compiled. Well, you you call VBA and javascript scripting?

Scripting languages are a very high level programming language, stuff like C and C++ is high level, Assembly is low level. I don't think by calling a language a scripting language you are disallowing it to be a programming language. You're just separating a language into a class with similar languages.

i get what you mean. c/c++ are medium level langs though.

Yeah I guess you're right.

Something like PHP is almost like C, except for the method in which it is executed. The terms "High level" and "Low level" refer to the language itself and how it interfaces with system resources etc. with little reguard for how it is executed.