Shoutbox

I'm trying to figure out how to design the site I'm going to be making for YASS. I have one implementation right now, but it looks rather simple.
The site as it is now can be viewed on localhost. The design is based upon a CSS Zen Garden stylesheet. On IE, the menu links are not the correct size, and on both Firefox and IE, the header bar on the menu is showing too large.

I have also been poking around the WordPress templates, and came up with another possibility.

I'm looking to see if anyone has any suggestions about my progress so far on the current site, or if anyone has other suggestions?

Also, I'm not the greatest with CSS, if there's anyone out there that is willing to give a hand, let me know.

Edit: updated link on localhost