You are approaching it too much like a programmer in my humble opinion. Yes there is rules and guidelines, but before you can follow them you need a style , a

You are approaching it too much like a programmer in my humble opinion. Yes there is rules and guidelines, but before you can follow them you need a style , a feel , a culture . You should get ( pay ) a graphic designer friend to come up with some food mockup of a single page. Work on it worth them or have them do a few iterations until you are really excited about it and both of you think "aha!" Once you get that far your next challenge is to truly use this as a style guide and pivot off of it as you design the rest of the pages. Good luck, it can be rewarding!