For an information site, the layout is very important to me..navigation is key as I would want to access links to information as quickly and as easily as possible. The navigation bar should be somewhere prominent and familiar like on the left or top, and be kept constant throughout all the pages so I don't get confused and frustrated. Content, navigation, etc should be divided with clear boundaries, so that I know what each part of the layout is for exactly. Subpages could come as links beneath each title on the navigation bar for easier referencing.

For each section or page, the information should be broken up into appropriate blocks with clear and concise titles, so I can glance at everything in an instance and pick out what bits I want to be reading, without having to scroll through endless lines of text and reading everything on every page. Colours are a great help as well, to differentiate information or sections at a single glance, or to highlight important details.

I find it helpful when a search function is included in such sites, which helps me find what I'm looking for at a single click. You can reference from a lot of tutorial sites, which are primarily content heavy, yet easy to navigate and retrieve information from. Here are a couple you could reference from:
http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/
http://page-flip.com/
http://www.kirupa.com/
http://www.pslover.com/

Just Yean's 2¢!