Designing A Website
Theme
In any site, the theme is what makes it what it is. Think of the feel you want your visitors to have. Happy, Sad, Awe, or Wow. Then think about what you want it to look like. Shiny, Dark, Realistic, or High Tech. Once you have that all worked out, grab a pencil and some paper and start a layout.
Work on the placement of where everything is such as your links, news, logo, and navigation. Once you have that all figured out you can start sketching the look of your site. Keep in mind how you want your visitors to feel. If you want to make them feel happy, put "Welcome to my site! Enjoy your stay!" Give them a reason to stay at your site. If you want them to fell sad, add some dark colors, give it some type of gloomy look. If you want them to be in Awe, add something that will pop out and is heavenly looking. Last but not least, if you want your visitors to think "Wow!" you want to do something that has never been done.

Design
This is of course the most looked for in any site. It is the supports to let the site function properly. Even without the fancy gradients and such, you want to have a nice solid base. Make sure the flow is right, and everything is not random. You want to make sure that the visitor can find everything easily and make all your pages accessible. Don't put a link to your tutorials in the avatar download area, and only have it there. Visitors will only be able to find it if they want an avatar. Then they would have to go through all that to get there again. Make sure that you keep the color scheme in the same area. Don't put green, pink, yellow, and black together. You also want your visitors to be comfortable, don't put aqua and white together, it will hurt their eyes and they won't come back. Don't use text that you download off the Internet, you will need to download it to see it on the site. If it is not downloaded it goes to a default font that looks weird. You want to make sure that the font is readable also, you want them to know what they are clicking and going into. Lastly, never use any type of background that is like an optical illusion. Keep it simple, like a nice line going sideways, or small boxes. Keep the color of it close to the background color. You can always just have a solid background. There is no rule saying you have to have some type of design in it.

Content
Well this is what keeps the visitors coming back. Make sure you have some content before you open to the public, you can't be a site about tutorials if you have none when you start. That will just keep the members away.You want to make sure that your content is worth something. Make it useful and make sure that it isn't copied. Make it yourself, if a user submits it, then state in it that it was user submitted, and if it is your work please let me know. When you make tutorials for a graphics program. You may want to add images to show what you are doing. Some people might not understand your step, or you may not be able to explain what you need them to do.

Staff
You should have enough staff to manage the site. With some one person is enough, but with others, it's just too slow and takes to long to get any type of support. When you do require staff make sure that they are patient and can take the time to respond to any problems that may occur. You can't have staff that yell at people if they don't understand something.Make sure you don't overdo it with staff. You don't want all your members being in some type of staff and have noting to do. If you only have fifteen active users, you don't need ten of them being staff. You need to trust your staff, and get to know them before you just make them an admin or such. You want to be able to leave them the site for a few days and not have to worry about it being gone when you get back on. They also need to have certain qualities, such as nice, respectful, and they are good at managing things. You can't have staff that is mean and will disobey you and do whatever they want.

Advertising
Having all the above wont matter unless visitors can get to your site. There are many other topics about this on other sites that you can read; this will just be a basic run through of it.

Affiliate.
Do you see other sites that relate to yours in some way? Then ask them if they want to partner with you. You can join top sites, or show your site off for reviews. That's how I found other sites. Just make sure that it doesn't look like an advertisement. When you do advertise, you want people to know what you offer before they even see your site. Make a mini-banner that is animated and will display the strong areas of your site. When you need to add a description, make sure you tell them what you are offering. Make sure that they are professional. No one will go to a site that has a description saying, "New site! Staff and members needed! We have a lot of good stuff here, check it out!" That won't get you anywhere.

Conclusion
I hope that this helped you in someway. Leave comments and let me know what you thought of it, if you would like to see some in-depth information on any of these feel free to e-mail me.