I'll be the first to say it, I am god awful at graphic

You need to work on the fonts, use something like Open Sans. Also, you should never work on a website design by programming it, you should actually **DESIGN** it first, and work out it's behaviour first on photoshop, and then program said behaviour. The website is looking ok, though, if you ignore the horrible default font. And maybe tone down the purple, or use it to navigate the eyes of the user to important places, instead of splattering it as a section divider.

yeah like the guy above said try making some mockups first on balsamiq or other mockup program

File: Screenshot_2016-08-04_16-49-38.png (90KB, 1366x769px) Image search: [Google]

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Thanks, I'll start using photoshop to plan out what I will do graphically. I've been using draw.io

Also I changed the colors a little and changed the font. This is what it looks like now.

File: Screenshot_2016-08-04_16-50-43.png (59KB, 1368x765px) Image search: [Google]

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second image

This is way from any good OP.

right the first thing is, the purple is a horrible combination for that dark gray. It literally hurts my eyes looking at those sharp purple lines with such a low contrast.

suggestion: change the color scheme a bit, needs to be easy on the eyes.

As others mentioned, the font is horrible.

Also I didn't see a side menu in like 15 years now.

style the buttons, don't just make them links. CSS3 can do such amazing things!

The banner is just a huge unused space right now.

there's even an empty space on the right of the main panel. The layout makes little sense like that. The panel with messages looks like it's just "hanging" there instead of being actually anchored somehow.
The general idea about web design is "if you can't build that design out of physical materials then it's a bad design" This mostly relates to stuff like shadows and overlays, but I think your layout has a similar problem

in conclusion you didn't make something like 4chan but modern, instead you made something like 4chan but from 1980's

but even if I say that, don't give up on it. Do a mockup in Photoshop like the other suggested. I would also recommend browsing a website galery of a few pro designers. get the idea about how elements work together in a design!

god speed anon!

pls invest in bootstrap
look up CSS color schemes and font share threads