09/25/2011 | Google Chrome | Brown Muffin Pros:

• First thing I really liked about your site is the layout it has a nice and matching color scheme and looks adorable. The image matches your sites theme very well but you could really work on the background. The orange blurry trees on the background look great with the orange pumpkins. The size of the layout is perfect for a type of site like yours. Your sub title has a pretty font as well.
  


• Second thing I really liked about your site was that your updates are easy to read and look quite organized, the date stands out and it's easy to read the content of the text box. The border of the updates looks neat and matches the color of the sub title. You have spaces between every date which makes it easier to read.
  


• Your headers are neat, the dashed underline matches the border of the updates and the color of the headers look nice with the other colors of the layout. The font is okay too but I recommend deleting the exclamation mark from the welcome header because it takes out more space and is unnecessary.

Cons:

• Your navigation is rather poor because it is small and hardly noticeable, if it was moved to where the updates are located and the updates could be moved to the main page than the navigation would look better and more noticeable. Also since you added too much text some of the content covers some of it. Here is how it looks when scrolling:
  
  


• Your bold text is green which does not look so good with the colors of the layout. You could use orange (which would match your headers), red (which would match the colors of the trees and the title color) or black (which would match the face of the pumpkin and the other text). Below are the two colors I recommend using, choose any:
  #FF6103 or #3D3D3D
  The orange color I do recommend using more since it's your theme. Try both on your layout and it could look nice.


• Your sitely could looks rather messy because its organized inconveniently. I recommend you to center the buttons and making the section titles (such as affiliates and listers) stand out by either making them bold or using image sitely headers from TLB's resources. You also have too much spacing between the "reviewed at" section and the credits. It adds more scrolling and appears unprofessional. You can remove it by deleting some of the br's from the coding. Your link back should also be placed in your sitely on the very top instead of the column. Counter can be placed below the credits because this information is not important for the visitor to know.


• Next very important thing is that you should never center large bodies of text, especially your introduction because it makes it harder to read and looks rather messy. The text should be aligned to the left instead, it makes it easier to read and look at. But your awards section should instead be centered because it contains graphics. Most graphics should be centered and most text should not.

9/20/2011 | Google Chrome | Strawberry Cake
Layout: When I looked at your layout I though "how beautiful and simple". It looks great, nice color scheme and an image is cropped and located properly. But one thing that really bothered me was the background. It was rather unappealing and does not match a lot. Something bright pink would work better. Another thing is that your navigation on the layout isn't so good. The color of the text is unmatching and the link leave encourages visitors to leave as soon as they entered. You should remove it. The layout as well does not scroll if needed. One last comment on this section, your site is called "Morgans CSS" and your layout is not CSS but is more image-based which leaves a not professional thought to the visitor who came looking for CSS (6/10)

Introduction: The introduction was not very pleasing, you start pretty well by saying Hello and welcome to Morgan's CSS. which looks good but then when you list what your site offers instead of features I recommend writing has or contains. Then when you introduce yourself you write This site was created by me, Morgan (nevershoutmorgan) I recommend first of all deleting the me part and secondly make your name link to your profile instead of writing your username in parentheses next. A good introduction is a key to win the visitors good first impression. What bothered me once again was the green link text. All of your bold text is green, which does not match the layout or the color scheme in any way and I recommend using one of the following colors: #EED5D2 or #DE85B1 which would match the image's colors. (3/5)

Quality of content: Lets start with the lookups. Style one's lookups look simple and good but a bit cramped all together. I suggest making the about me box wider and the navigation not as wide. Next is the font, it is mixed and is placed un-properly. You should make bigger letter spacing in the code and not make all of the text bold. Having transparent signs and a shield could be good too.
Style two looks pretty good to me except maybe having it wider could make it look more organised. Style 3 is definitely one of the least in quality. Top parts have poor shades, your headers have not matching font and color and the text is squizzed a bit again. Style 4 is one of my favorites, simple and organised. All other lookups are pretty fine but the last one, style 10 has distracting backgrounds, they are too bright in my opinion but the idea of having an anchored lookup is brilliant.

Moving to your petpage layouts. Style 1 would work great with simple things such as applications or notes and has a good color choice. In style 2 you might want to remove the diagonal lines on the background of the text boxes because they distract from the content. Style 3,4 and 5 are easy to customize and work great.

Moving on to your pet lookups. Style 1 could use headers which could be like white colored. Style two has a distracting background, you could make it look better by changing the size and color of the text box and making the background more pale. Having a border around the image of the pet would look good as well and would grab the visitors attention quickly.

Moving to your requests page. Your requests are closed sign is unappealing and small. You could find bigger and better signs at TLB's resources. Go to we resources, then open/closed signs and you could find better ones such as the glowing or the grey colored ones. Your requests box is too small. Make it bigger. I suggest removing Just fill this form out and neomail it to me: part because it has no purpose. Instead you could put a "neomail" sign below the form and center the form and the sign. Favorite requests section could be made smaller for easier navigation. (8/15)

Quantity of content: You have quite a big variety of content to choose from. You have enough lookups in my opinion but all of their styles are similar. Try using textures to have prettier backgrounds and placing the boxes elsewhere to make more creative ones. Your petpages are all quite similar as well, try using different navigation styles and different headers.

You dont offer many pet lookups. There are several ways you can get ideas, first of all try making more image-based lookups with more colors. Or if not make a rectangle box at the top for a banner. (11/15)

Sitely: Your sitely looks pretty well organised from the first glance, all the necessary sections are located conveniently and places properly.
But lets start with the high quality link backs:

Button is cropped very interesting, has a fast and simple animation and easy to see text and image.

Very nice font and image used and they look great together.

Here are the low quality ones that I suggest removing:

I suggest removing this button because the animation is poor, it moved slowly and makes the text highlighted in white which does not blend with the button's colors.

The text is rather hard to read and the background is too bright for the eyes.

Next go your affiliates, you have a decent amount of good affies but affiliates such as Delicious Pie Directory and Circus are rather lowest quality of all of them.

Next are listers, just a notice that the following are closed and should be removed: The Faerie Compass and Zebbarl's links (affected by filter and does not work).

In the reviewers section the following sites have closed: Cafe de Lis, Sweet Pea Reviews, The Looking Glass and The Deli. And please dont forget to put The Bakery's button there as well. Otehrwise your sitely looks great. (3/5)

Score: 31/50 or 62%
Recommended | Not recommended

9/03/2011 | Google Chrome | Strawberry Cake with Whipped cream
First Impression: When I first entered your site I liked it, the colors of the layout look great together and very welcoming. Your updates on the top of the page though look bad, updates is not the most important part of your home page and should be placed on the bottom of the page. The site from the first glance looks like it has not much content to offer because the navigation is small and no different than any other graphics site. You have lots of updates which tells the visitor that you are a very active site! That is all about the first impression...
- 1 point for incorrect updates placement(4/5)

Layout: Your layouts colors match and look great altogether but your title is located at the bottom and is hardly noticeable, always remember to put the title on top, especially if you dont have a header that says the title. The image on the layout is well drawn and put together. The red hair of the girl on the image does not look good on the layout because it is the only red thing I see on the layout. If you do like the red hair you should make something else red such as the title or box borders because red looks very random and plain on the blue layout. The background is bright, looks brilliant with the design. Overall the layout is nice and convenient but you could use more textures and change the hair color.
-1 for title placement, -1 for red hair color. (8/10)

Introduction: Your introduction lacks professionalism and is not so good. What does Ma chère, Monsieur or Mademoiselle mean? Most visitors will be very uncomfortable with these strange words. Instead of it is with deepest pride and greatest pleasure that I welcome you to my site I suggest writing "It is the deepest pride and greatest please to see you. Welcome to the site!" It would be more welcoming and is a correct use of punctuation. After you say as I proudly present you write your site's title, and have an unnecessary space below. Remove the blank space below Magic Of Disney by deleting a br below the word in your code. Next part says Bonjour and welcome to the Magic of Disney, which is run by interl. This site specializes in Disney graphics, which includes User Lookups, Pet Pages, Banners, animations and much more! it tells the visitor what your site offers but has some things that have to be changed. Instead of "This site specializes in" you could write "This site offers". And instead of Pet Pages you should write petpage layouts. You do not need a link to your userlookup again at the end of the page, so I suggest removing Owner: interl part because it is just a repeat of what you already said in the introduction. Everything below it looks fine.
-1 point for strange words, -1 for incorrect space use, - 0.5 for repetition (2.5/5)

Quality of Content: Moving on to your next page, Graphics. Your rules could be improved more by using different words to not sound rude. Instead of Do not steal any graphics or claim them as your own. you could write "Please do not take any of my graphics and claim them as your own, it will be considered stealing." because this sentence describes what is considered stealing and does not sound rude. In rules 3 and 4 instead of no... write do not... because no is just one word that needs something to hold on to, such as do before it. No editing sounds like you wrote the sentence in a hurry without really describing what you mean. Id changing the size not allowed also? Explain! It is very convenient that you decided to see an image in full view. Your user lookups are look very nice, great banners on top and circles in type 1. Under type 3 your first user lookup is quite poor quality, the background is plain boring and your textboxes have a bad shade. All your other lookups under type 3 have the same problem with background choice and no textures. Especially second layout under type 3 that is yellow, it is hard to read the text on that layout and there are no textures or a good background either. I have no comments about your petpage layouts except that most of them are too blurry or bright. Your pet lookups are okay, even good, very creative and nice color choice on those ones. You have a ton of great animations but the ones below are not so good:

On the first one you cant even see what is happening, too dark. On the next one I see nothing unique, some person walking, and what is so good about that? Animations have purpose but the walking second one has no purpose at all. Your animations are so creative and very nice, I just absolutely love them! Your icons are great as well, great textures. But you could use more text on the icons. The shield below is not so good, just a plain image with no colors and a normal shield behind it.

And I also think you can do animated or glittery shields, they could looks fantastic. I see no problems on your requests page but instead of smashing everything on one page why not make clickable signs that would link to different requests? I like your extras page. I suggest making 2 columns for your likes and dislikes instead of just listing them like that.
-1 for incorrect rules use. -1 for poor userlookups under type 3, -1 for shields (7/10)

Quantity of Content: Wow, in this section I could give you full credit, you have so much to offer that no other site can. I recommend advertising more and improving your user lookups and petpage layouts and then your site could offer not only a big variety of content but also high-quality content. (10/10)

Sitely: This section of your site is rather poor, lets start with your affiliates, instead of no off-sites write "I do not accept of-neopets site" because it is more detailed. Your reviews are organised rather bad, use columns because you have such a big waste of space, lots of scrolling and blank space. Same with awards section. Below are the low quality link backs:

The first one if hard to read and the background is rather plain boring to the side. The second button has several errors, a talking animation is one of them. Talking animation without sound does not look good. Your third "link back" is too big, the vertical lines on it look rather bad with the colors of the layout. The border is cut off to the sides and the text's animation is not so good, too slow.
- 1 for bad link backs, -2 for reviews and awards organisation, -1 for space use (1/5)

Last Impression: I was not very impressed with the site at the beginning but your graphic content is amazing, so now I am pretty impressed. You could definitely improve more over the year and learn more about making graphics. You have a lot of content, now you should start improving the quality. Try using programs like GIMP for making user lookups and petpage layouts and icons maybe. Organise your site some more using the tips I gave you earlier and you can turn your site into awesomeness.
-1 for lack of lookups and shields quality, -1 for space use(3/5)

Total score: 35.5 from 50 (71%)

8/25/2011 | Google Chrome | Sugar Cookie
First Impression: When I first entered your site I did not feel very welcomed at all, the colors of the layout are too bright and the layout is a premade with no image at all. You could use some more colors, at least a small image and I suggest you request a new layout all together from Nienke's Premades. Next I do think that the bright text color is hard to read especially for people with vision problems, because the colors are very bright on the background. Here are the codes to colors that would might look better on the layout: #8B2323 or #6F4242 What I did like in the first impression is a feeling of freshness, the red color of the headers looks very nice and neat and it is easy to navigate. (11/20)

Content: Lets start with your introduction, I did not really like some things, first of all it is the welcoming header. It says Hello friends with a heart, you could change it to Welcome, it would be simple and short.If you do want to keep the header like that, add a comma between the words. The introduction was not very well either, try using what I've edited for you below:
Hello there, guest, I am <a href="http://www.neopets.com/userlookup.phtml?user=xxloveholic">Grace</a>. I am so glad you are here and I want to welcome you to 4 corners. 4 Corners offers you a GIMP 2.6. guide/tutorial. I hope you can find my site helpful to you.
The first things I changed was Hey there guest to Hello there, guest because your older version did not have a comma and a hi sounded like you already know the visitor, hello is most common and good to use in an introduction. I did change some grammar errors and added missing commas, feel free to edit the introduction any way you want. I also changed my name's Grace(xxloveholic) to I am Grace because it is a simpler version of what you said and links to your lookup if you click Grace instead of xxloveholic. Now I will review your navigation.

Your navigation has a wrong title, instead of sidebar write navigation because a sidebar is not what sites call their links, a sidebar usually has news or site's updates. Next I suggest moving the sitely to the bottom of your navigation because the person that is reading it is most likely interested in the tutorial more than in your sitely. As I earlier said, I recommend requesting a petpage layout but if you do want to keep your current layout you could make it anchored. (The Bakery's layout is an example of an anchored one) Or at least make the navigation scrolling with the page. I love the effect of the text when you hover over it on the navigation, bright and a good border! Another suggestion, your counter on the bottom of the navi is too bold, you could use a counter base and other good web resources from TLB's resources. Now lets move onto the tutorial.

Starting with your updates, I love how they are organised, very nice color choice and easily readable. In your Symbol Key & Contact Information section I noticed the first paragraph says Mail me! Message me! I absolutely LOVE receiving mail! So go, go. Go choose what type you want to send ^^, you should absolutely delete it edit it because it sounds childish and does not have a point. Also you could add Symbol Key it bold letters above the key so that the readers know what they are now looking at.

Next is the gimp help & resource sites, this section is very poorly organised. You could rank the sites you listed in their categories (example: #1 - deviantART) and add spaces between the links. Your keyboard shortcuts are very nice, they are organised a lot better and look fantastic, with the bold and italic text.

Next is the actual tutorial, since I do not use gimp much I cant really grade it but I will quickly inspect it. You have too much images, they look overwhelming and it is hard to find the text, you could make more space around the text or make the images smaller. Under the first section, Clear Lines AKA Scale lines you made a grammar error at the very end, you wrote finsihed, change it to finished. That is the end to this section! (26/40)

Organisation: Your site is not organised very well, it is hard to get back to the top, you could use a button "back to top" under each section, which can also be found in TLB's resources. Getting to your sitely, these buttons I suggest deleting:

First button from the above has a hardly readable text. Second button from the above has a poor animation and an image that does not relate to your site. Also at the end you wrote && Come back soon delete the second &! In your sitely you also forgot to mention affiliates, example is in my sitely. (14/20)

Last Impression: I was not very satisfied, the tutorial is quite good and has a few helpful tips I could use in the future but the text is hardly readable and too much scrolling. I suggest requesting a custom petpage layout, editing what I listed above and of course, improving and adding more content. (10/20)

Overall score: 61%
Recommended | not recommended

8/29/2011 | Internet Explorer | Custom Cake
First Impression: The first impression is very good, because looking at the amazing layout the person is very attracted to the site from the first glance. The updates section shows how active you are which is very good placed as well. When I scrolled down and reached the content box I was dissapointed, the two buttons at the top of the page look very unorganised with the color of the layout because the colors do not match at all. Also the navigation is quite poor, I will talk more about it in the organisation section. (12/15)
Content: First when I read your introduction I am not very attracted, read what I wrote for you below and see if you want to add it to the page:
One night you were walking around town board and you hear royal music coming from a building. Then you decide to go and check it out. Hello there guest, I am Connor (cubscout30), welcome to The Site Club.The site opened on August 28th, 2011. As you can see we are still doing construction here. If you look to the right of this page you will see the Updates, Navigation, and site advertising, which tells you that we have many things to offer. Many of these include cite competitions, rankings, advertising, recommendations, guild competitions and a lot more. Certain things are only allowed to be accessed by members so you may want to join before we are full. To join just click on the Membership Center link. This will not always be open as we have limited spots available. Most of these pages will have rules, so please follow them. If not, you will be warned and then if you do it again we will take away your membership. If you have any questions just neomail Cubscout30
I noticed that you capitalized several words that should not be capitalized and have many punctuational errors in the text. Please spell check your introduction if you want to improve it. Next is the advertising section.

Your ads column look neat, the text in the boxes is easy to read as well but I suggest centering the button with the text box. In bold blue letters you wrote get advertised but the blue bold text does not looks really good with the other text, you could change the color to maybe white. Also you could center it. Instead of writing the text you wrote you could erase it all and just put a neomail sign or envelope that would link to your lookup. (you could find those at TLB's Resources) Moving to the membership center!

The membership center looks good from the first glance, but too much text. After the rules you can add a "agree" and disagree signs or text and agree would link to another page where you can post the form as well as the other text below the rules. Instead of submit your application to cubscout30 you could use another envelope or neomail sign. Rule #3 is, I think, poor. Most people would not like to post the button of The Site Club everywhere. And if you do want to keep the rule you should still remove the but we don't go around checking everyday. part. Moving to your SOTM arena.

You started pretty well, the word arena already attracts the visitor. I like everything until I reach the rules. First rule states that he site must be established, why? I dont see any reasons why a new site cant complete. If you'd like to keep the rule I suggest rewriting it and telling the visitor what you actually mean by established. Rule #3 says that if you get the most votes you might not win, why? Another, in my opinion, quite silly rule. So does that mean that you pick the SOTM, not the people who vote? If so, state that in the rules as well. I though think the rule is unnecessary, people might not want to join the SOTM for that reason. Also the rule about cheating does not explain what you mean by cheating, you could add that too. And the very last comments about this page, the pink Enter the arena sign looks rather bad because the color does not match anything and is totally random. You could change that to white or something...

I am skipping the broom closet becaue you told me to, so this is the end of the section, you can read about the good bye desk in the organisation section. (22/50)
Organisation:The site is not very well organised, the rules do not tell much and you have many spelling errors, run a spell check. Now I will review your good bye desk. After the why not take a royal card... sentance you should add a question mark, because it is a question. You missed many commas and punctuated many words that should not be such as again at the end of the paragraph and you at the first sentance. All of your buttons though are very good. My favorite one is:

Because the image is very nice and bright the font is curly and pretty and the animation is simple. (11/20)
Last Impression: I was impressed by the variaty of your content, the site is very creative and I just loved the idea. Grammar and punctuation errors and some very weird rules did not look fine though, for that I lower the score. If I was a visitor I would visit again for sure, but only if you update often and add more content. (9/15)
Overall Score: 62%
Recommended | Not Recommended