Score: 90/100 + 7/10 Bonus Points
Date Reviewed: August 12, 2011

Impressions {13.5/15}:
When I first entered Creativity, the first thing I saw was the name of your site in a rainbow font: since the word creativity is all about imagination and artistic thoughts, the use of multiple colors is very suitable, as well as eye-catching. However, I also noticed the large green graphic around it. Upon closer inspection, I saw the gray shadow of the gap in the graphic behind the title "Creativity". The problem is that gray's monochrome-ness is rather dull and distracting behind the bright colors of the rainbow. The second issue I had was the quality of the graphic, which seemed to be slightly blurry or pixelated. This can affect the perceived quality of such an image. I will offer further critique in the layout section.

I liked the first paragraph of your introduction because it was a creative narrative, it was distinguished from the rest of your homepage intro by color, and it explained your site name more. The only problem I had was that I felt it could have been slightly darker, so you could try #9C9C9C instead. As I continued through your introduction, you stated your site's purpose, your name and username, and the day the site started. Putting a link to the next section is great as well, so readers can go straight on. However, I thought your intro was a tad wordy, and could be shortened a bit to ease reading time. Here's how I suggest you recompose the first two paragraphs after the narrative:

Welcome to Creativity, a creation guide for Neopets sites and petpages created on July 14, 2011! We'll help you through the steps of creating a site, whether it be a bustling petpage with lots of visitors or a small personal page; we here at Creativity like to believe you can do anything you put your mind to. Creativity is a very imagination-oriented site, so keep an eye out for hidden extras along the way!

The third paragraph post-narrative was mainly informative so I left it, though as you can see I felt the date was better in the first paragraph (but that is up to you). The last paragraph is untouched. From what you have in this introduction and a quick glance through your updates, you look professional and helpful, which are both necessary for this type of site. Looking through your site, you are still professional and relaxed at the same time, which is great to see because the visitor can be more at ease and want to continue through the site.

-1 for large green graphic issues affecting my first impression.
-0.5 for wordy, albeit well-written introduction paragraphs.

+2 for original content: various requests, resources and mini-guides!

Layout {11.5/15}:
A quick look at your layout proves you are not new to coding: the tables you've used have organized the left sidebar with an ever-present Neomail link, FAQ link, reviews and fanmail, and the counter. The homepage's content box, updates and buttons are neatly laid out. Your requests pages are also well done and nothing wastes space. Good job with all of them! I also thought that the layout was rather simple for a guide, which is exactly what you'd want. First, I'll cover the issues mentioned previously. The shadow in the gap behind the title was rather distracting. I suggest either lightening the shadow (so that there is still a bit of texture behind the text) or removing it completely. If you decide to remove the shadow, you might want to decorate the gap in a different way so it doesn't look like wasted space: perhaps a thin (2, 3 pixel?) light green border, like #89cd4d.

The second problem with the green graphic is its blurriness and clarity. It looks like it has been scaled out of proportion, and the quality is lost. Next time, if you ever use this kind of graphic again, use its full size and let it extend down to your content box; you could fade it using GIMP's feather settings (Rectangle Select tool) so you can crop it once it goes behind the content box. Take a look at Create Impression's GIMP blending tutorial for how to fade.

Next, I'd like to bring to your attention an issue with scrolling. My resolution (1280x800) means that the main page scrolls. I think this is a bit unnecessary, as it is partially caused by the large green graphic. It can be fixed by simply using a smaller graphic in your layout, for example, instead of going down 350 pixels before it reaches the content, you could crop it down to 250 or less.

Onto a more aesthetic look at the layout: I notice that, other than the navigation, the content and that large green picture, the layouts stops at the quote "An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail". The right side of the screen continues in an empty white. With a lot of green, black and grey being focused on the left side, I felt it was a bit unbalanced visually. My advice would be to either center the graphic, or add a separate graphic to the right corner (bottom or top both work fine). This page has a code for anchoring an image to the corner of a page (if you didn't know it already), and it would work well for your page if you had an extra graphic to use there.

Lastly, I found that the color scheme was not implemented very well, because it seemed predominantly green, yet the title of the site was in rainbow. If you could perhaps add some varying colors to headers or textboxes, the site might be more balanced (though I did see you make an attempt to use blue for links and yellow in the headers). For example, use some red in one header, and a bit of orange as a textbox font color.

I'll end this (long) section with one positive comment: your navigation is separated, the site from the content itself, which is great because the user can come for either the content or just the site and be unhindered by the other part.

Below is an image to show examples of changes I'd suggest, such as cropping, fading, and color change.

-0.5 for color scheme issue.
-1 for 'unbalanced' look from color-based focus in layout
-2 for clarity of and shadows on green graphic.

+2 bonus for layout made by site owner!

Content {28.5/30}:
On the homepage, where you tell us a bit about yourself, you give good reasons to trust you for site advice. The rest of the guide follows in a clear, step-by-step way to go about creating a site. There are many parts which I haven't seen in other guides that I thought were extremely helpful, and their well-considered placement helped: the layout algorithm was ingenious, because it is a (fun) way to come up with a layout type that can be used when requesting layouts later. The coding tutorial was great because it gave all kinds of coding help right off the bat. You had a few different premade layout styles (all done nicely), then a huge variety of color schemes! (Something must be said for 'Square Dance': you certainly have a lot of 'creativity'!) The button station was an exceptional mini-kit of button-making that included anything beginning buttoniers would need to start buttoning. The backgrounds were well-edited because they were smooth in texture, vibrant in color. Your borders are very unique, and having the text right there on the page is a good idea in case they don't want to download fonts.

Your 'resources' section looked good on a whole, but the browser signs weren't the best quality. I will discuss the problem more in the 'sitewise' section. Continuing, though, the larger Neomail signs weren't bad, and the first set of bullet points impressed me with their shading, which was very realistic. However, the heart set of bullets were not the same; I felt that the final shading color on the right clashed with the edge of the heart. Perhaps, if you went into a little more detail shading, or just used the second-lightest color a bit more, the brightness could be toned down. Anyway, the dividers were also well done: the first had a variety of sparkles surrounding it, giving off a very 'sparkly' look; the second had a nicely executed dashed line ending in a little heart, and the third was an animated color scale. What delighted me in your resources was the variety of colors for various color schemes on sites.

I last looked through your request section. Below are my favorite image banner, and least favorite image banner in your portfolio.

The first is my favorite because it is simple, yet coordinated. Parchment in the back is an old kind of writing paper, and that is an old-style writing pen, so together with the ink font it is all matched together. The black in the ink is reflected in the pen. The delicate brushes at the corners only enhanced the banner.

The second is my least favorite of the image banners because of the text. The text is dark gray in a gray outline, which is difficult to read, especially since it is in a curly handwriting font. In addition, the gray is not to be found anywhere on the colorful background, so it contrasts too greatly. The teal of the Draik's skin (in shadow) probably would have been a better choice than the color of the tiny claw. Though the background wasn't done badly; the image quality is decent and the brushes were effective.

On your layout requests: they don't look so bad! The one for Spring Breeze is your best because its color scheme it uninterrupted, the image choice is cute and cropped just so, and the navigation looks fine!

In your review, you looked at the site, went through all the criteria with appropriate detail, and offered helpful suggestions for improvement. The only error I saw was that in the summary paragraph, you typed 'recieved' instead of 'received', which is a bit ironic, considering the context. (It was the only one I could find, though.)

Time to revise the request section. The thing I liked most was how you blended the waiting lists together into a master list; I can imagine this not only keeps it all in one box, but gives you an idea of where to start from your various requests. I felt that the rules could be revised, though. The rule I have a right to refuse your request for any reason can be seen more in-depth at How to Offer Great Service; what could the reason be? Would you refuse my request if you didn't like my site? If you didn't like my avatar? If you decide to keep this rule (after all, it is your choice how the waiting list looks), perhaps you should rephrase it like this: I have a right to refuse your request for any reason, which will be explained by Neomail. That way, your customer won't feel automatically rejected. I'd also like to suggest that the rule When I say believe, you say unicorn be located higher up the rules list so it isn't the very last bullet, thus not extremely isolated.

-1 for browser buttons and shading issue, both in resources
-0.5 for slight rule mishap(s)

+2 bonus for bonus content: various requests!

Language {18.5/20}:
Your grammar is, on a whole, perfect. I could not find any grammar errors worth correcting (or, if my memory serves, any at all). I did find some typos scattered about the site, though; considering the amount of text you have, it is not a terribly large ratio.

In your layouts request form, I noticed that you used the pronoun 'we', to represent Creativity as business, in the first blank; however, in all the other parts of the form (and in the other forms) you referred to yourself as 'me' or 'I'. This confused me a little; be consistent with your pronouns to avoid further confusion (I'd recommend sticking with 'me' and 'I').

I also saw that your site used a lot of smileys in various places within the guide. I would try to avoid doing this, as it can make you seem less professional. If you still want to convey an easygoing, pleasant mood, you could try to insert it into your writing's mood; however, I can't tell you how to do it so I'm afraid I can't tell you that. Here's an example of my writing on the homepage that might be an indicator of writing a happy mood without smileys:

Guild information pages and pet applications are fit to apply, so don't be shy!

-1 for minor spelling errors throughout site.
-0.5 for register conflict with smileys.

Sitewise {18/20}:
I can see, looking at your updates, that you update frequently - at least every other day, on average - and that almost all of your updates are directly site-related. What I also like is that you've somehow color-coded your bullets to the type of news you post; it brings out the rainbow color scheme from the layout's title. Looking at your updates box, I also see you're entered at Planetarium, which is good for your site's publicity.

Now, on to your link back buttons. I must commend you for variety of linking choice, however I noticed a common problem in each of your buttons that hindered their appearances: no matter what the background was inside the button, each had a black border, and most had black text. The contrast between bright color and lack thereof is unsettling, and can easily be fixed by using a dark color from the background. As an example, my favorite button in your portfolio happens to be the oldest:

It is not animated, but the monochrome rose and red border/text contrast each either artistically (the flower naturally has color, but instead the border does) and it's a very simple button. To add this little bit of color to your link back buttons, you could either change the existing border/font colors, or request new buttons (though I feel that you would rather make your own). Here is a recolored border that I did myself to show you the difference (though clearly the shadows could use some work) and recolored text/border:

On to the affiliates and listers! I see that you have a fantastic amount of affies and listers for the amount of time you've been open, so great work! However, a lot of affies means a lot of maintenance, so:

Effey's Code Guide is closed.
Tae Tae's Shop Directory has changed names to Affinity's Shop Directory.
Meow Buttons doesn't list you as their affiliate (probably because Ray of Sunshine is owned by the same user).
Tantha-Fonts doesn't list you as their affiliate.
Spark is closed.

-2 for color issue in all link back buttons.

+1 bonus for frequent site updates!

Opinions: Green is a nice color, but don't be afraid to use other colors around the site! I don't think red, orange or purple have been implemented too much. (Keeping to the rainbow theme!)

Final Comments: Content-wise, I found very few problems throughout your site, which is great to see. My expectations were surpassed with your great variety of extras in addition to a wonderful site guide. I know you have the capability to make a stunning layout, so don't give up! And try to put some more color into the borders and text of your buttons! Thanks for requesting, and I hope you come back soon!