Hi Aaron --
I'm trying to find an answer on your subject question for a couple of months now. I have found that DNN community in general is rather busy, and to get a prompt answer is usually rather problematic. Therefore very often you'll find yourself on your own. Hopefully this thread will not be the case.
To speed-up with DNN (self-)learning/development I'd recommend to invest some money - that seems to be a rule here - investing about USD500+ into online tutorials, ready to use skins and modules as well as professional and reliable DNN hosting will let you to make some great looking DNN sites in short time.
Tutorials - look e.g. at http://www.dnncreative.com
Skins, modules,...: look e.g. at http://www.snowcovered.com/
My experience is that DNN web sites are usually a bit slow but there are quite a few exceptions:
http://www.sonicwallsecure.com/
http://www.powerdnn.com/
http://www.invenmanager.com
How they do that - is an open question to me. Is that all hardware dependent or there are some DNN tricks & modules to speed-up DNN sites - I still can't find generally applicable recommendations from DNN professionals...
<<<1 is a personal site for family and friends with blog stuff, photots, videos etc.>>>>
Look e.g. at ActiveSocial - http://www.activemodules.com/products/activesocial.aspx
<<<The 2nd site is to review items and blog about them so to speak.>>>
Look e.g. at www.dnnprofessor.com products
HTH,
--Shamil