Cork'd was definitely a lot of inspiration, but how did I steal his design? The color scheme is straight from http://kuler.adobe.com/ (under popular) and while I totally stole his idea of the character in the welcome box and search bar placement, the layout is different in all other respects. I took ideas from lots of places, including the Expression Engine site - and the logo is simply a modification of a free Illustrator icon from Komodo Design. :)
Anyways, I did send him an email to show him the site and make sure he's personally OK with it, but haven't heard back yet. It was more of a courtesy than anything else for using the similar character + welcome box combo.
Your design -- original (though still same family of shades, etc.) colorscheme or not -- is just too similar. It's obvious you started with his design and built on top of it. Same width, same logo position, same search box, same zebra-striped tables, etc. And those similarities are exacerbated by the use of the illustration and the checkmark icons.
While I'm guessing Dan would most likely be OK with the design, if you think of it this way than I'm guessing lots of others will too. I'm changing a lot of the front page layouts around - I definitely don't want that impression to be the popular one.
Thanks for your input, I very much appreciate it. Check back a little later and let me know what you think. I'm keeping the color choice though, that was the first thing I picked when I decided to make the site.
Update on the design - Dan saw the previous version with the rounded version and character and was fine with it. Either way, I think I'm going to stick with the new design just to keep far away from any confusion.
Anyways, I did send him an email to show him the site and make sure he's personally OK with it, but haven't heard back yet. It was more of a courtesy than anything else for using the similar character + welcome box combo.