Web Designers - What elements make for great designs?

Hey,

Some of you may have seen my post earlier this week about being terrible at web design and looking for resources.

I wasn't able to find any, and decided build an "even a dummy can use" web application to generate web 2.0 rockstar designs.

If you guys can point to some design elements that should be included it would be really appreciated.

I'm thinking things like tabbed links, gradient usages, very specific things I can create using jquery and php for clueless developers like myself.

Also, if any of you have ideas for what the web application should contain, that'd be appreciated as well.