I kind of like the idea, but I think your are really out of the way with the design, there is still a LOT of work to do. Everything feels like a website from some years ago, it looks really...flat it's say. There are too many shades of blue and they are used without an apparent reason. The gradients are wrongly used, a light blue fading to white under a white text is not a good idea. A lot of elements have unreasonable inconsistent size, like the search box, is too small.

After this quite harsh review, I suppose you are not having access to a designer. That's fine but I strongly suggest to at least have a look to the designs you can find on themeforest.net, most are quite cheap(20$) and will give a whole new feeling to the website.

I know the design might sound as a secondary thing to a developer but I'm afraid that without a decent one the media will not even take you in account, which is a real shame because the idea is really nice.