What things would you suggest as good ways to make a nice and user-friendly User Control Panel for a site? Clear and crisp interface.

I'm referring to arrangement of settings and how and where they are divided (as in pages) as well as navigation styling (tabs etc) and data inserting, editing, and deleting.

Any suggestions etc are greatly appreciated.

Depends on what the site is for.
I would say having a left column with all the menu options should be sufficient.

I would advice you to get nice icons and give it a nice clean look with easy navigation. I wont advice you to use more graphics. It makes admin control panel slow.

as a use point a view the 1st think one would want is a easy navigation... Color the important sections... also keep heling links close to a action spot so a use never feel lost...

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b2b

It's pretty much for a profile site, and the control panel is where you edit your details and configuration etc.

I too, like the design of having a left sidebar that has lots of links, and maybe having tabs or something on a horizontal bar to switch between the general catgories. Try not to make it to complicated when dealing with lots of controls or it is a hassle. Look at a forum script's admin menu, this is a good example of a nice control panel user interface.