Simply Guilds is a guild-review site, opened to satisfy our addiction to reviewing guilds. We will rate your guilds by everything a potential member should judge you by. How your guild looks from the very first glance, whether or not you have the right content suited to your guild theme on the main page, how well-done and organized - or completely confusing - your website is.
We will not simply say something about your guild is bad, without explaining why. This is not only to get an outsiders opinion on your guild, but ultimately to find more and more ways of how you can improve which should always be one of your ultimate goals.
Jess: I myself am semi-literate/literate. That being said, the only way your guild NOT being semi-literate/literate will affect your review is if I find it has lead to spam or less than enjoyable conversation that needs to be deciphered because it's full of chatspeak that I find difficulty reading. Fair enough? Excellent.
Tommy: I love looking at guilds, so this is why I decided to join Jessica. I will rate every guild fairly and not give anyone an advantage if we happen to be friends prior to me reviewing the guild. Active guilds and no chatspeak guilds are golden in my eyes.
Updates
July 20th, 2009.
My fellow owner has officially joined me! So welcome Tommy to the ranks =)
July 14th, 2009.
I've been reading the House of Night series, greattt books, so I apologize for letting some personal time take over from my reviews. They will all be done in time, so no worries - I won't forget anyone :)
July 10th, 2009.
My reviews were put on hold yesterday but I will begin resuming them again today to finish up those on the waiting list. I should also be joined by a second reviewer as soon as they are able to - this is the person I said may be joining me and is still the only person I would like to join me. Thanks so much to everyone whose applied for a review!
July 8th, 2009.
I've gotten a lot of guilds reviewed so far, I think, considering the length of my reviews and that I'm all on my lonesome :3 I'll probably put a hold on advertising for more for a little bit to catch up on some layout requests and coding requests that I've let build up from my main =/ but apart from that, thanks very much for letting me review all your guilds! Andd I'll be adding an Affiliates section, as well as a guild re-visit section. (Revisit is just to show if guilds have taken my advice or improved at all; the old review will still stay, but they'll be able to show a new rating for if they've gotten better.) That's about it from my end of the world.
July 7th, 2009.
Yesterday was a great day, despite some unnecessary comments from another review site and despite the fact that the very first guild I had to review, lost the owner who asked me to review them. So, my first review has now become Zelio, which is what everyone thought anyway. I posted a new review, and later on I'll be moving on to the other guilds. Thanks for being so patient ^^
July 6th, 2009.
Got the site up and running, finally ^^ If you're wondering about the layout, it's Witch Hunter Robin - I figured because I'll be reviewing guilds of various themes, the site theme should also change on a regular basis to various different themes so I don't cater to one over another.
Applying For A Review
You must of course follow the following rules if you expect to be reviewed. Failure to do so will result in your application to be reviewed deleted and ignored, or if I have already begun reviewing and something comes up, an automatic zero with of course a full explanation of why. So please, do yourself a favour and read these rules thoroughly and be sure it is not the case with your guild.
1. I am not fussy with your guild having a premade layout. However, be aware that this will affect your rating for that section - severely.
2. If you have any stolen content, anything claiming to be yours that is not, or credit not being given where it is due, you will automatically lose your opportunity to be reviewed.
3. In applying for your guild to be reviewed by
me, you are asking for my
opinion. Expect no less in my review. I will give you constructive criticism, but if there is something that bothers me, you will know it.
4. I will be joining on this account, sixthofapril. Being extra nice or courteous to me, extra welcoming, will not help your score. In other words, trying to impress me to get a good review won't. I'll be reading old posts, I may even be lurking for awhile, I will be using everything at my disposal to rate the activeness of your guild. Please don't embarrass yourself by acting differently, alright?
5. Do not harass me, do not badmouth me, simply because you do not like a review. As stated in the third rule, this is my
opinion and I am entitled to give it.
6. I (Jessica) have dial-up. As a result of which, things take a little longer. I can't help that, and trying to rush me won't make anything change. Be patient, or receive a zero. I will inform you of any delays that may make your review take longer than it should.
7. Do not ask to be reviewed without filling out the application. It's there for a reason, use it. I will reply and kindly remind you of the application and to fill it out if you want to be reviewed, should you send simply a message saying "review my guild please" (or any variation of that.)
8. You are required upon being reviewed to link back to this page; whether you put a button or text link does not matter, if it's on the homepage of your guild, a portal, or a website, or anywhere that it can be seen, that's fine, but it has to be
somewhere =)
9. Anyone on council or considered an owner can apply for a review, however, I ask that you take it up with the guild leader first, or be sure that they will not mind that you have asked to be reviewed! Once posted on the site, they will stay on the site unless a true valid reason is supplied.
Application
Guild Name:
Guild Theme:
Guild Leader:
Guild Link:
Send your application in
here; if there are any problems with your application, you will be notified promptly.
Rating System
First Impression: ?/10 | Pretend I'm someone interested in joining your guild, not to review it, but to become a
part of it and everything it offers. If I was actually guildless, would I want to join your guild? Is there anything automatically unappealing to me to be noted? Or, would I simply close off your guild and move on to another.
Content: ?/40 | Your overall content, be it on a website or wherever. Do you have enough to keep people interested, are you repetitive, are you original at all? Or am I finding myself bored and wondering what's so special about your guild.
Layouts: ?/20 | Your guild layout, website layout, and if you have any other pages with different layouts, those too. Are they premade? If you have some custom layouts and some premade, your rating will still suffer for this section. If you have completely premade, it'll be a zero. Sorry, but I can't rate YOUR guild on something that isn't
your work.
Member Activity: ?/30 | How active your message board is, and the percentage of your members that are active. If the inactive members are a noticeable higher percentage than active, it'll be noted and a member sweep recommended - strongly.
Grand Total: ?/100 | Overall the final mark you'll want to be showing off - or hiding - after the review.
Twilight
iTwi (closed)
Reviewed by Jess.
iTwi (now shut down) was my first Twilight guild that I had a chance to rate through Simply Guilds. Being an owner of an established Twilight guild myself (obviously not on
this account XD ), I was a bit excited to see another persons take on this theme of guild.
The first thing I noticed that really turned me off was the insanely small content area. I personally think these are annoying to scroll through, I try to avoid them at all costs personally. It seems to be a trend, for what reason I'll never understand. Also, the main part of the layout was a premade splat done by someone else - and the person featured, I have no idea who they are, or who they are supposed to be. I understand that people want to strive to be unique, particularly with such a popular theme, to attract more members and to show that thought is put into the guild, so straying from the tradition of Edward/Bella, or Jacob and the wolves, is fine, and understandable, but if you're going to stray from traditional layouts, it should at least be more obvious that this is a Twilight guild. Maybe the guy featured is one of the new actors, but not everyone is going to know that until the new movie is out, and really, the only thing that made it obvious it was a Twilight guild was the content within the content area.
There don't seem to be updates about the guild, but rather New Moon. I think that updates regarding the movie aren't really as important as updates about the guild, which apart from a little blurb in the council chat area, I see nothing there about it. It's nice to get to know more about the new movie, but I don't think it should be taking priority over letting people know whats going on with this new guild. There's a to do list, which I like. It shows things they need help with (if they're willing to let you help) and things they plan on getting, to give you a better idea about the future of this guild. Again, I don't like the "new moon newspaper". New Moon is a movie that is big for the time being, but I think a newspaper should be including LOTS of things. Information about the guild, about the author of the series perhaps, about the movieS, as there will be more than one. This was just all nitpicky stuff, because I can actually look at this guild more critically as though I were considering joining it since it's a theme of guild I would actually consider joining, and so far, nothing's caught my attention.
Initially when I went to the website, I thought it was pretty awesome. I'm a huge Kellan Lutz fan, before he was in Twilight and of course especially now that he is. However, I found that the website layout was premade, and though it looked nice, I can't give that credit to the guild whatsoever because it wasn't really theirs. The content was, which is what I looked at next, hoping it'd boost my opinion from an iffy to a maybe.
There was a navigational area meant to help, but it was so small! Okay, I understand small content areas, they annoy the heck out of me but them I can live with. But a small navigational area? You have to scroll endlessly looking at all these links, I didn't even scroll all the way through before just sighing and moving on. I realize, this isn't the fault necessarily of the guild owners - it is a premade website after all - but you have options available to you when choosing a layout for a website, and I don't think this was a wise one at all.
Looking at the text, it was kind of annoying that it turned colours when I hovered it. It wasn't a link or anything, and it was just a bit annoying to be reading something and then accidentally hit the mouse and it made a bunch of text go black and make me lose my spot.
There were some excellent rules that were lost by being clumped together. Put some space between those rules so it's easier to tell one rule from the next! Their sorting quiz for joining a team was interesting, I haven't really seen any of the quizzes Twilight guilds have so I can't tell you if its unique or not, but it looked pretty cool to me. Their teams were sort of interesting, Cullen Fang, Quileute Paw, Human Teeth. Nice change from the traditional vampire/werewolf/human by mixing it up a bit. Their description of the teams were also kinda cool ^^ Though I noticed, only one team had any members - and the guild itself, has eleven members.
The guild is four days old, so things are still under construction such as activities and such, so I couldn't tell you if it's good or interesting that way, though they make the promises of having a lot of activities that are unique to their guild. Which, will be nice - show more unique qualities ^^
That was really it for content, as I said it's a new guild so not everything is set up yet. I can be understanding of that, it seems like they want to try and put it all out at once - or at least most of it - and when it comes out, I'm sure it'll be great. Unique? Only time will tell, but they seem to be excited about it, so hopefully things will work out for them.
I joined and went to the message boards. Saw some chatspeak which isn't a huge deal because it's not against the rules, but this was when I remembered that I didn't read the rules - I started typing up about how they were clumped together, and simply moved on. So, I was happy to see that it was not against the rules because otherwise the person on the guild account would be violating them D= What I did notice that there were no rules about spam. This may not be a problem now, but I've seen before people posting and posting, talking to themselves or spreading out their posts over five to six posts unecessarily. I think the owners may want to consider taking time to figure out what the spam rule should be for their guild. One word posts? Posting only a smiley? Posting multiple times back to back? I've seen in guilds that it gets competitive for posts, and there ARE people out there who will intentionally spam for that reason and you can't really get mad at them for it if it's not a rule.
I made my post on the board, and was greeted by two people, Poptart and Vee. Poptart was one of the council owners, she advised me to check out the rules and such which of course I already had done, but it was nice to see the council on top of things and making sure that people were aware, that there ARE rules to be followed. Some more members came on, they all seemed to be very random and entertaining (though not in a bad way, I swear XD) and good friends. I didn't really stay posting for very long since I wanted to get on with the review and had seen enough evidence that they were active. It was nice to see that the council was pretty active, the members were reasonably active for when they joined, and only one person had zero posts which was good. Four of the eleven members came on while I was still there, which was nice to see.
Overall... I wasn't blown away. The message board was great for being active, which is obviously important, and the guild is new so of course there's not much there, but I judged what was there and I think there's definite room for improvement. I personally am very very picky when it comes to guilds I would join, and I'm not sure I would look at this one for very long if I was guildless. However, that is
me, and as I've stated I'm a fussy person. I rarely join guilds. So, I can't tell you to take it to heart that I wasn't blown away because it takes a lot and that's a bit much to expect from any new guild. This guild is great for people who want to chat, who want some news regarding the world of Twilight, and for people who like helping out. It's in it's developing stages, it could use other people interested in hosting things for them and contributing, and I know there's a lot of people out there who love doing that sort of thing, and for you, this guild would be great.
First Impression: 6/10
Content: 20/40
Layouts: 5/20
Member Activity:30/30
Bonus+ Very active for a small guild, +10
Grand Total: 71/100
Twilight Bookworm
Reviewed by Jess.Twilight Bookworm was another Twilight guild I got to review. The blend used for the layout might have been nice, except it was horribly pixellated and I somehow don't get the feeling that it was some sort of brush affects. There was also nothing saying who did the layout, and I think credit should always be given to the person kind enough to do a layout. Also, the font for the guild name looked very basic in comparison to the rest of the layout, which made it seem like it might have just been edited on some random image, which I hope isn't the case. If it's /not/, in the future try doing something to make the text stand out a little more because the font really just looks like something you could add on through paint and say ta-da!
The CSS was a bit more impressive, it wasn't anything special by any means but I loved the colours used, they weren't hard on the eyes really. The welcome message wasn't anything special, but it did make sure to tell the basic important information for new members which was good. The updates were about the guild, there seemed to be a lot of links that the updates were directing you to go check out, which is great for either informing members of new things or trying to get them to want to check out old things that may not be very popular. The basic text was white, and the links were a sort of salmon colour, which made links stand out more. There was no council chat, which isn't always a bad thing, but I think it might be helpful knowing more about these owners and what's going on with them.
I had already joined the guild, and while looking at the hompage of the guild and moving on to the website, received an official welcome. Now, it's no secret what account I join on, and though the leader of the guild is not who asked me to review them, I'm sure they were made aware, so it's hard to say when this sort of situation arises if it's just general welcoming, or what. I'm going to say that it was them being welcoming, just because it's a nicer thought.
I moved on to the website, the text was very bland. All black on white. Nothing anyone with even the slightest HTML knowledge couldn't do easily enough. The layout is okay I suppose. It talks about the guild purpose being to discuss Twilight, and to help Neopians become a bit richer through participation in their activities. They also say you don't have to be a twilight fan to join.
WHOA. Rewind. Okay, so basically, for the Twilight fan, you can join and discuss things and heyy enjoy the activities, but it opens itself up to non-Twilight fans to earn a few neopoints or items here and there, just to get more members? That was the impression I got. Why else would it say everywhere I go, that you don't have to be a fan to join? If it's a guild to discuss Twilight, wouldn't a non-fan find that uncomfortable? It seems like it's just offering up prizes for members, which I do believe is against the rules. Normally, I'm not one to go on about the rules of Neopets in general, but because I think this is just a bit out of the ordinary, like it's trying to bait non-fans just to raise their member count or something, I feel I should mention it.
Keep in mind. I'm not saying thats what is being done here. But, being who I am, that is something that would automatically set off an internal alarm and make me wonder about the guild and if it's really something I would like. I'm sure I'm not the only one, who would feel that way.
The rules were simple, some of them that were a bit more guild-specific were the 1NP auction rule, the maximum amount of games to play, and posting at least ten messages per week. This last one I found a bit funny, because when you look at the member page, there are a lot of members with under ten posts in general, so clearly not posting that many per week. I decided to count.
The guild has 111 members. Of that 111, 92 had under the ten posts required per week. Meaning over a total whopping 80% (yes, EIGHTY) of the guild did not meet this requirement. This shows the council is very sloppy in enforcing at least this rule, and it really doesn't make me doubt my earlier opinion about it being all about member quantity, not quality. If you are going to have a rule, enforce it. If you don't want to enforce it, take it down. Clearly, it's not encouraging anyone to be more active, if almost the entire guild is inactive.
This guild is in DESPERATE need of a cleanout. Not next week, or next month,
now. It's pretty much that crucial. This is usually where a guild might say they do cleanouts, so to put it into perspective, the oldest inactive member (with zero posts of course) joined on April 1st. And no - this isn't an April Fool's joke. Where is the council during this? Why are they not keeping on top of this? Nearly all of the council is full. Can't one of them be in charge of cleanouts, of getting members to post? And if you say that some of those are side accounts, sure I might understand that because if I got suspended, I'd want to still be able to talk in my guild as well. But if I did get suspended? I'd have more than ten posts for the duration of that suspension, and if I didn't post at least that much, I wouldn't bother joining on a side account. So why should anyone else, unless it's to make it look like a large guild?
I could go on a lot longer about this, because I was honestly surprised and disappointed at this discovery, but I don't want to have a purely negative review, so I shook my head and moved on without posting on the message boards. There was a member directory, but only two members were on it so far. Not even all of the council could be bothered, which was a little disheartening. There was a New Moon news page, it was a bit entertaining to see the Rob was apparently almost hit by a taxi while trying to escape a mob of fan girls, but there wasn't really enough info there apart from that to keep me interested. There was an adoption agency which was nice to see, I looked at the activities and it was nice to see some neo-related ones as well as Twilight to sort of back up that anyone is welcome - I had wondered how that would work, I must admit. There was a pharmacy, a library, a post office, "plushies galore" and a toy factory, etc.
Checked out the fonts page; they were all pretty much the same, and most of them were two colours that looked hideous together matched up, and they were all the same font family (one I personally have always hated, papyrus, though that's just me since a lot of people use it now). I'd suggest mixing it up a bit and adding more of a variety of fonts. It's cool that you guys have different colours and whatnot for it, but anyone could probably do that if they just looked up a quick tutorial. There were some graphics, some trades, avatar lending, the usual stuff.
Overall... not impressed. It seems like they're trying hard to put some effort into their content, which is more than some guilds can say, but it seems like very very little effort is being put into the members. It looks like a Twilight fan dump, not meaning this as in it's awful or junky, just that any Twilight fan can join and never have to worry about being on or not because nobody seems to care. You just join and that's it. You can say you're in a guild if anyone cares to know. It's possible that the owners of this guild believe that cleanouts are mean. Well, think about it for a moment. Is it mean to want people to be talking to you, as though they are your friends? Is it mean, when you make it a rule that people need to be active? Cleanouts are not mean. Sometimes, people get inactive. It happens. If they give you a reason, great, if not, it's their loss. You don't have to be mean about it; you send out your warnings to the people at risk, you don't get mad at them for not posting but encourage them to post and make friends, because that is what a guild should do - bring together people with similar interests, so they can become friends and share their other interests - and if they don't respond, or if they don't care, delete them.
Unfortunately, a cleanout would completely demolish most of your member count. Your advertisement says you don't want people to think you are inactive because some posts were deleted - one of the owners informed me this themselves - but what I don't think they realized is that the members page shows you the amount of posts people have. It is never deleted from there, unless a person leaves the guild and rejoins. The maximum amount of posts from a non-council member was 350+. The highest amount by a council person being 2000+. I'm sorry, but anyone who joins your guild that cares about it being active is going to take one look at that members page like I just did, and click the leave button as quickly as they clicked it to join. I know this from personal experience, and I know it because I'm about to do it right now myself.
This guild is good if you like to do activities for fun. It's good if you like to chat to some friends and have some nice discussions. It's good to just join for some fun. I do not think it is that great of a guild, nor do I think it is organized or all that difficult to manage, really. It is not good if you dislike large guilds, or dislike people who care about member count - which is what my final conclusion has been, unless they just don't care about anything in general. It's a laidback environment where you can come on and post once in awhile, but that's about it. My first impression was better than the one I had after getting an inside look, and frankly, the guild needs its owners to buckle down and start enforcing their own rules.
First Impression: 4/10
Content: 20/40
Layouts: 10/20
Member Activity: 5/30 - NEEDS A CLEANOUT.
Grand Total: 39/100
Harry Potter
Squib
Reviewed by Jess.Squib was the first Harry Potter guild I had the opportunity to review. They advertise that they strive for a "community like environment", "treat everyone as if they were family", and aim for "quality over quantity." Admirable goals, let's hope they can be lived up to! ^^
The layouts fairly nice, there doesn't seem to be much done to it in general but it looks nice and neat, which is important. The texturing and whatnot is nice as well :) Nice colours, and such, so I liked the layout. There was a nice welcome message stressing the importance of quality members over quantity, which it's nice to see more and more guilds are finally starting to do. Overall, though, there wasn't really a lot of content on the homepage of the guild to check out. There were no headers to speak for to help organize it, just one content area for the wecome message and points, one for links and the amount of points in the guild funds ("Gringott's"), and another for council chat. There weren't really any updates, apart from the personal ones in the council chat. On one hand, this is good because each owner can put their own updates up, but it also seems misleading because there is no way of telling when it was last updated - if you're a member, you can probably tell, but if you're not and you're just looking at this guild, there doesn't seem to be anything unique or attractive to pull you in. Many people are impatient when looking at guilds - if it doesn't click right away, they might reject your guild. Often, people will just take a quick look, if they don't like what they see, they reject you and then later on the people they've asked to stay, will be the guilds they look at more thoroughly. You need to make sure that you've got something to pull them in, to make them want to look beyond the homepage of the guild.
Decided to move to the website since there wasn't much else to say about the main page of the guild. The layout was nice, it looked more like a professional type layout as opposed to the traditional flashy type. Don't get me wrong - it still had its flash value :P It was just done in a more professional way which was a nice change.
The most important, informative pages were listed in tabs at the top of the main content area, which was convenient and easy enough to see. Their updates at their daily prophet enabled comments, which was an excellent way to get feedback and I haven't really seen that much on guild websites (that go offsite of course), so that was something I thought was pretty cool.
The guild had the traditional 1NP auctions, avatar lending, how to earn house points, and a yearbook, like other guilds of other themes. I'm not sure if the yearbook was new, but only four members - two of which were council - out of fourty six had applied. A yearbook is a great way to get to know the members, but it was lost on the fact that not many have applied and filled it out.
They had some classes up and running, but were in need for a lot of classes still. They had a fairly established "Diagon Alley" section which was good to see, and various other things that weren't overly grand.
Overall with the website, I found it was really disorganized. The main informative pages were nicely placed in tabs at the top of the main content area, like I stated before, but the rest of the navigation was poorly placed. You had no idea what was activities or not, the links were just randomly placed all clumped together. I think organizing some more headers might be beneficial so members know whats what. I've definitely seen other Harry Potter guild websites, and not that I claim that this guild or any other should mimic all others, but I do believe that the sense of organization - which can be done in your own unique way while still making it easier to maneuvre - might be beneficial. It would also help make it look neater and less thrown together randomly.
I really liked the spellbook, there were different "spells" made up by members of the guild which was really cool to see the different things people thought of.
One thing I will say is great about the guild is it's message board activity. Though a lot of posts were revolving around their roleplays going on at their roleplay forum, it showed that they were still active - I've found in other guilds that have a roleplay forum, often either the guild or the forum is neglected. If you're busy roleplaying it dominates your time and you don't post, or if you're at the guild you don't bother with the roleplay. It was nice to see a balance. Also, very few members had zero posts - only one actually - so it's nice to see the guild is mostly active.
My overall opinion of this guild is pretty good, I do think the website could be revamped a little in regards to its organization, because as it stands it mostly seems pretty standard and not out of the ordinary. I'd recommend this guild PARTICULARLY to people who love to roleplay Harry Potter - but it's also great for people who love to chat, because the roleplay is optional and doesn't go on at the message boards, so you don't have to feel swamped with peoples roleplaying posts. It has some activities and all the usual standard Harry Potter stuff, and as I stated before a very cool spellbook and some other things you would enjoy.
First Impression: 7/10
Content: 25/40 - unorganized/small amount
Layouts: 18/20
Member Activity: 30/30
Grand Total: 80/100
Neo-Related
Zelio
Reviewed by Jess.Zelio was very interesting to review the moment it began to load on my browser. It is a new literate neo-related guild founded on the 30th of June 2009, that decided to go private after a poll asking the members what they thought. That was very appealing to me, showing right off the start that the people behind this guild cared about the members, their opinions, and what they wanted this new guild to become. Layouts and fun stuff are all great for a guild to have, but if nobody listens to the people who make up the guild, it can never evolve to its fullest potential. It seemed from the first moment that this would not be a problem with this guild.
The main layout for the guild I found very gorgeous and appealing; it was colourful, but not blinding, more colourful in an artistic manner. The coding seemed very simple, which blended nicely with what didn't seem to be a simple layout. Rather than clash, the two complimented one another to look very nice, organized, and presentable.
The updates section was more of a council chat, but it was sort of like individual updates regarding the guild or its members, so I suppose it made sense. It was just different from the usual updates with the given date, and things done, and then the council chat following. However, different isn't always a bad thing. I had a good feeling about the guild.
I moved on to the website next, it seemed more like an informative page for people interested in joining, though I found the layout again very nice and appealing. I had some problems with a bit of the letters being cut off in the content area, but only just barely, so I was still able to make out the word perfectly fine. The top part of the layout, however, was cut off - I couldn't see the whole guild name, and I'm not sure if this was the design or some error in the coding because I was using FireFox. It wasn't a huge issue, but it was a bit noticeable. The information presented was definitely excellent quality. You began with a formal welcome, learned the history of the guild, given clear information on what to expect in a professional manner, informed what would be expected of you to be sure there was no confusion, and more. It was only a small bit of information, but certainly effective.
I moved on to the portal which showed more of the content the guild actually offers. One thing I must comment on, is that the three main pages the guild /needs/ to have (the homepage of the guild, of course - the website - and the portal) each had different coloured layouts which added a very nice touch of variety. The portal was a bit more of a basic layout but it was still nice ^^
The jobs were very cool, I'm not sure if the names were all necessary unique to this guild only necessarily, but they were certainly well-assigned names. They show they care not only about the members but their members pets, which I think really brings in the neo-related element.
The different teams need a bit of work. I'm hoping the team names are temporary because the teams are not unique at all, they're not even cliche, they're just... "team1" "team2" "team3". Not creative and doesn't really match the beauty of the rest of the guild-blocked-ing a team is very simple, the rules are simple, nothing overly unique or particularly interesting to note here.
The activities page has a fair few activities, but I don't find it varies much from any other Neo-related guild. However, the guild does say on its website they don't claim to be the best - and want to be more of a virtual home for its members. So, I didn't spend long looking at the activities, overall the guild seemed to have enough to offer. I was a bit thrown off by one of the fonts on the official fonts page, using chatspeak. Considering this is a literate guild, I'm not sure this really fits in.
I joined the guild and checked out the message board. They happened to have a new member who joined, and the ones on at the time welcomed her. I also saw in the old posts that the team names were not decided yet, and WERE in fact temporary. This was pleasing, and certainly a relief.
I was greeted by three of the members fairly soon upon posting, they certainly didn't seem to be acting out of character from past members joining, if they knew I was reviewing them. I got rather caught up in talking with them, mainly about the adorable pandaphants but other things as well. I didn't stay long, but the time I was there was certainly enjoyable. From the members page, it seemed like most of the members were fairly active, the admin members particularly so.
Overall, it was a pleasant experience. I think this guild would be excellent for anyone looking for a literate Neo-related guild, it's very active considering how new it still is, and I am sure it will continue to grow to become a very excellent guild indeed.
First Impression: 10/10
Content: 30/40
Layouts: 20/20
Member Activity: 29/30
Grand Total: 89/100
*~Neopians United~*
Reviewed by Jess.*~Neopians United~* is a private neo-related guild. I loaded it up, it was okay looking but nothing special. Looked pretty basic, actually very basic, but it was still nice looking. I've definitely seen worse. It was a bit bright but thankfully, I didn't find it blinding even though it had a neon green image. featured. The kougra was very cute ^^ I think if something more snazzy had been done with the coding, and the guild name had been done in a more fancy font, it would be much better because simple though it may have been, I did like it.
There are four council members, but only the owner has put anything in the council chat. I think that the others should be able to, or, if they /are/ able to, they should be frequently posting it up so everyone can know what's going on with the leaders. The leader using their username for the council chat rather than a name they like to go by, seemed very impersonal to me. Maybe convenient in regards to people knowing exactly who that person is, but a few minutes on the board and any person would likely know who each council person is, by name.
Checked out the portal, again it was fairly bland. There are many simple things that can be done to make something look good. Learning some interesting things in CSS would really help a lot to spiff things up a bit, and the feathering done on the main picture looked fake because of the border of the rest of the image around it. It also seemed very strange seeing a sheep herder (or whatever) in the desert, which is where it was placed. There seemed to be a lot of page, I checked out the review ones and saw there was already a previous review. Either this person was a VERY easy reviewer, or they don't exist. Why would I say they don't exist? Because nowhere, that I can see, is there any mention of who this person is. This makes the validity of this "screenshot" questionable. Anyone can type up a review, upload it, put it up and say here you go, someone said this about us. That's the way this came off to me, which was a little... strange.
I checked out the yearbook, found it very... basic. It's all mostly about Neopets stuff which, being a neo-related guild is understandable, but then there is music randomly there. I feel a guild yearbook should help you get to know the members. I didn't really get to know anything about anyone that I was particularly interested about, and I think a yearbook would be an excellent place to list the names people like to go by as well as their username so you can get to know them. I don't remember anything about any of them, except some liked similar music to me. The "58 reasons to join" page listed things I think nearly any guild could say. They also claimed to be unique, but I don't see much so far that seems unique. And they advertise premade ads? Uh, that's not really a reason someone might want to join, unless they like advertising I suppose. A lot of people prefer you to actually talk to them when advertising, rather than post something premade and move on. It also doesn't have fifty-eight reasons. I realize it's just incomplete, or maybe you can't think of fifty-eight reasons, but even just saying "reasons to join" would work.
There was a newspaper linked on the portal, which was a different link from the one on the homepage of the guild, leading me to believe the portal is not updated as frequently as it should be.
One thing I found interesting was rather than splitting into teams (which I found later on that they were split into teams, though focus seemed on the guild points rather than teams), each member earned their own points for more of a personal competitive edge. You don't have to worry about your team being inactive at times, because it's all up to you for earning points. There's nothing really stating what these points might be used for, that I could see, but there is a guild points shop where you can redeem your points for the items listed. I think that's pretty cool, and I actually really liked that. Things started to look up a bit more for this guild from here. The awards page clearly hasn't been looked at, or touched, since it was added. It still has some of the default text there from it being a premade CSS layout. I know it has stuff to be added, because there are awards on the main page of the guild.
One of the activity pages (there were two) didn't show any activities that I could see. It was more of an events page, which I think is what it should be called so members know where to find out about upcoming events. The other activities shown seemed pretty basic to what other neorelated guilds might have but you earned individual "guild points" for it. There was a teams page, but I had no idea the guild even had teams or that you could join it. It's mentioned on the website, but very vaguely. The website had the welcome to the members at the very bottom of the website, which is a very bad move - it makes it seem unimportant, which I think it is very important information that should either have its own page or be very clearly placed somewhere easy to find for new members. The guild did offer 1NP auctions, an adoption agency (which seemed fairly well done), avatar lending and the promise of a list of member-made guides which is promising.
The guild says not to spam in their guild rules, listed on the website, but I saw absolutely no enforcement of it on the boards whatsoever. The leader herself posted a lot of posts under five words, some even just one word which is REALLY bad, when she is the one who I imagine made the rules. And, the rule I refer to states: "and all messages you post should be more than five words." I think council especially should be following the rules they set, or changing the rules if they find it impossible to follw them themselves.
One thing that was pleasing. Though when I went ahead and joined, and posted - initially to inform them of the broken newspaper link - and though at the time only the owner was on, I looked through the old posts and found the guild seemed to be fairly active, looking at the members page there were few members with zero posts, and those members who had zero posts joined fairly recently. The guild practices cleanouts, which is a good thing.
Overall... I don't know. It's great that the members seem loyal, the guild works hard to put them to work so they can keep involved either by participating in the things available to them, or by hosting pages themselves. This also helps the guild out overall, which is smart. I think mainly it's just an organization issue. They have headers stating the various sections, but it seems very cluttered to me. Things are outdated in regards to the website, which I mentioned before having a link used for something else - I find now, at my one last look at the guild, that the link on the guild for the newspaper is different than that on the website. The chatting seems to be the main concern of the guild, staying active and recruiting members. If you are someone who likes to be able to contribute to a guild, this would be a great one to join. You can help out, host a page for the guild, and it will be appreciated by the people in it. I just can't tell you anything about this guild, apart from perhaps the individual points for "buying" items from the guild, that is overly unique or special. I don't think the guild is bad, I just don't think it's great. I've seen better, and I think this guild could still use a bit of work. It's excellent for getting members involved, and I applaud them for that, but it's not something I personally would join. Then again, I rarely actually /join/ guilds, so that doesn't necessarily mean anything. I look for something
outstanding in a guild.
First Impression: 5/10
Content: 25/40
Layouts: 12/20
Member Activity: 27/30
Grand Total: 69/100
Kare
Reviewed by Jess.Kare is a private, literate, neo-related guild hoping to be a close-knit family as opposed to a regular guild. The welcome message is fairly short and sweet, the updates equally short and sweet, and a full to do list concludes the overall homepage of the guild. It's nice to see not only what the guild plans to have, but what they have achieved so far. Half of the things on their list have been completed so far, which is promising. The layout was very simple looking, but I still liked it a lot. It was cute and easy on the eyes. I think some practice in better CSS could help make the actual content on this page, look better.
The website overall, despite these things, was very informative. I liked how it listed the new members and the names that they liked to go by. It gave a nice personal touch, gave a formal welcome, and it made things feel... cozy. It also showed a more extensive list of updates. I also like
I click on the website link and wait for the page to load. In regards to appearance, it's not exactly unique or creative on the part of the owners - a premade CSS layout is used here. The welcoming message on this page, however, was very interesting and a lot more creative. "In the shadowed valley of the Air Faerie Cloud, there lay a red bricked building." And it continues from there. I like guilds that sort of make the guild seem more like an actual place, the way roleplay guilds do, without necessarily containing the roleplay itself. I find it interesting and a creative way to show off the guild. It makes the experience seem more real, as though you were actually there.
The rules were very basic. No chatspeak, be active, follow TNT's rules. The ranks were unique to the guild and I rather liked them. Kareless, Joyful, Kares, Kares for all, Loves All... I do however think that earning each individual ranking should be more difficult. It gives people something to work towards, and I could really probably get the posting requirement for the last ranking within the first or second day, easy. I think after those three weeks required to be in the guild before getting it, things would get boring in regards to the ranks.
I'm also not sure I like the way the council is set up. If this guild is going to be around awhile, two hundred posts isn't really that much to become the second council position. And, I think letting it just go to someone who posts a lot is careless, ESPECIALLY deciding to give it out on the grand opening day. The council members are supposed to be supporting you, helping you make sure things run smoothly. I know you may not want to think about it, but problems will arise, at some point things will get overwhelming and hard to maintain on your own, and simply giving council out to people considered active doesn't seem good enough in my opinion. Again, I think this is extremely careless and a recipe for disaster for the guild. This may be a personal opinion, but it's one that comes from experience. If you choose to continue on that path, best of luck to you and I hope it works out and you're part of the smaller percentage where choosing council at such an early crucial stage of the guild, isn't damaging.
Anyway, that out of my system, I was checking out the other things on this page. They mentioned teams, the graphics and fonts page, a magazine, a brief history, and the ultimate appearance of their layout since they're a private guild.
I liked their application, it seemed pretty basic, some of the things that I thought was interesting was rather than ask why they want to join, they ask what people like most about the guild. I found it a bit strange that they asked why would you leave the guild, but then I remembered it is a private guild, you're sending out I suppose "precious" invites to people in the hopes that they'll make your guild a nice, welcoming place, so I figured they'd want to see how loyal the people they're sending invites out to, would be.
I liked how they had a "Junk Drive" - members can hand in their junk items, anything they don't need at all, to help other members with the packrat avatar. They had a pharmacy and a bakery, all on the website, which normally I'd advise against, but the way it was organized it seemed to work out well. I also liked that they had their own "random events". Members will get sent a message saying they are able to pick up a present for being a member who is active, and for being just a member in the guild. It's a nice way to give out gifts without violating TNT's rules, because it's random and given out simply to be nice and to thank people for being good members. The activities were still pretty basic, I liked how some of them required the people to go outside the guild, others required them to post the answer on the message board, it was sort of like altogether it was leading members to places they should be going. The teams were pretty basic, they were just related to Neopets. Which is okay, but I think having neopets as the team can cause some problems (nothing huge) since some people may not like any of the neopets you can be. It's also not overly creative on the guilds part to call a team "Team Yurble" and so on. Also, so far only one member has bothered to join a team, yet excluding myself there are twenty. I think if they want to keep the teams up, they should stress joining them to new members more, as well as new ones.
So, while checking out more of the guild I decide to join and post a message, because if I post it early on, the guild has more of a chance to impress me with how active it is. I was greeted by two members, one not so enthusiastic. I tried to get him involved in some kind of conversation and I was actually ignored. I lurked for awhile after that, some of the posts were quite a bit apart, and just from when I had joined it wasn't seeming very promising in regards to how active it was. The guild is a week old, with over a thousand messages and twenty members excluding myself. It should be a bit more fast-paced, so I looked through the old posts to give them the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes, you just have a slow day, or a slow time of day.
I found in the old posts that they were more active, there were quite a few of them on, so it pleased me to find that I was just on at a bad time. If it's usually quiet at that time on their boards, I would recommend advertising at different times of the day to get people from different timezones. This would ultimately help you ensure there are people on at all sorts of times of the day so no one is ever lonely. I also found in the old posts a member used chatspeak, though the rules said "Absolutely no chatspeak. None." There was no one enforcing it whatsoever. The leader wasn't on at the time, but it should be a routine to check the old posts and encourage members to be helping remind others of the rules as well. Granted, it was just a mere "brb" but the rule says absolutely no chatspeak. If there are exceptions, it should be posted, because I was sure confused by it.
They seemed very nice in their posts, very kind towards one another, very welcoming, etc. I checked the members page, the leader isn't quite as active as some other members, who joined much more recently. Then again, it's understandable at such early stages in the guild that the leader would be working on guild stuff. Only one member had zero posts, and they joined the same day that I did - the sixth of July. Most members had over ten posts, let alone five, which was nice to see.
This review ended up going over two different days. Due to some neomail I had to send out on behalf of my sites reputation, I had to take a break from reviewing and afterwards went off to bed. I came on this morning to find I had received a neomail from a member in charge of the yearbook. It was nice to see that she was clearly on top of things, and taking her job seriously.
Overall Kare seemed like a very nice, cute guild that was working towards being a place full of friends who help one another out, and despite anything that happened while I was a member, the old posts showed they truly were that way, they do care, and I think that is very important. The members seem to be absolutely in love with this guild, I may not have met any of them but, well, that's why I love reading old posts ^_~
First Impression: 7/10
Content: 30/40
Layouts: 10/20
Member Activity: 26/30
Grand Total: 73/100
Neopian Headquarters v3.0
Reviewed by Jess.Neopian Headquarters v3.0 is, naturally, a neo-related guild. I loaded it up and was a bit distracted by the layout. It was extremely busy, showing at least nineteen different images, very bright, and it really distracted from the content area. I thought the layout was sort of cool, but if you're going to have a layout busy that way, you need bigger content areas because the focus should be on your content and not the layout. It was also a bit pixel-ish in some places, but I realized that was due to the fact that the layout was a bit of an animated one which was kind of cool. Not much was animated, I think there was an avatar and just a spot on the layout that turned on a bit of a glow. It was still kinda cool though but like I said, busy.
Also, hated the navigational area. I appreciate the affect they were going for with it, but it showed the links all going in one direction and then more links going in another direction. Pick one and stick with it in the future, and I think you'll be better off. The content on the main page was also very lacking. There was a two sentence welcome message, and some very short entries for updates. I did, however, like how their updates (well they called it news) section was set up. They had the date bolded and underlined, then the general topic of that entry underlined and in italics, and the time just underlined. They also showed the items that were going up for auction, though that was all the updates said so that was all that seemed to be going on at a glance.
I moved on to their website, which at a glance seemed very simplistic though organized in a way I liked. I thought it was cool that they had their own avatars that they released for members avatar profiles, and the avatars were very nice looking. However, I had issues seeing the rest of the club avatar section - it would not scroll down any further for me to see, so an unknown amount of text got cut off. They did however show individual avatar profiles on another section for the members who had signed up for it, and it was really cool because it was like a miniature version of Neopets right there. The members directory was cool too, you got to find out each members timezone, a little message from them, they had little pictures of items to represent them, I liked it a lot and it also showed when it was last updated, about a week ago.
I went to check out the lab map logbook from the website, and found that it was reset to the default petpage. The link from the guild and the website were two very different links, the guild homepage link for the lab map logbook being updated and the website one, well, not. This shows that the website might not be updated as often as it should be, and broken links should be fixed.
There were no activities. In fact, the activities schedule still said they were all starting on June 7th, when it is now currently July 11th. It was a bit of a grim sight. The guild does offer the traditional things such as an adoption agency, one neopoint auctions, those sorts of things. They also have their own avatars to be earned which as I said before I thought was really cool, they design them themselves and members have to earn them. Apart from that, there didn't seem to be much to do that would continue entertaining members.
I joined the guild and posted to see how welcoming they were. I did notice that the guild description claimed they were a literate guild, but I saw a lot of lowercase/lack of punctuation/abbreviation. I realize that the guild description probably means very little, buuuut some people do read it, if people are looking through the Neopets Guild Directory, they're going to see that and be a bit mislead. Semi-literate is more what I would say this guild is. Again that's just being nitpicky, but it is still misleading ^^
I was greeted by four members who introduced themselves - actually said their names, which was nice. I've been finding in a few of the past guilds I've reviewed that people just say hi, and then I have to post again to ask their name because even though I say what mine is, they don't all feel the need to do the same back. So that was nice ^^ I also checked the members page, not a single member with zero posts, the members all seemed to have a reasonable amount of posts, some dramatically more so than others which is to be expected.
I really enjoyed chatting with the people who were on, they were active but not overwhelmingly so, it was just a nice small chat with the people who were on.
Overall I thought this guild was pretty nice. It was an average size, even though the layout was a bit busy I appreciated what they were trying to accomplish with it, their auctions are CLEARLY very frequent and updated which is great for getting some nice items pretty cheap. They had all your basic Neo-related necessities, as well as the very cool avatars made by the guild, for members of the guild to earn. I think just a bit of updating the website to fix things up, adding up those activities that were due a /long/ time ago, and continuing to get the members feedback and this guild will do excellently.
This guild is great for people who like to chat, who like avatars because as I said you can earn your own little avatars which I think is cool, and a great place that's easygoing, laid back and relaxing. It's also good if you want to do things to volunteer to help out, because the guild has things to offer but still has room to expand and offer more.
First Impression: 5/10
Content: 20/40
Layouts: 15/20
Member Activity: 25/30
Bonus+ Guild Avatars/Avatar Profile +20
Grand Total: 85/100
Zen
Reviewed by Jess.Zen is a guild that I've had the pleasure of rating before on my main (xband_x_geekx) and I was curious about getting an inside look at things.
Zen is a private, literate neo-related guild so naturally I started off with their application page. The application page looked nice, it appeared simple - not cluttered at all - but it was affective. They have nice information on the main section describing briefly their guild - how it's mainly chat oriented, they're welcoming to new members, they feel like a family, and they chat about everything, not just Neopets. They also discuss the dynasties within the guild, and the "leadership opportunities" available as well. On the side you can see the stats which is good since this is a private guild and people interested in joining a guild should always pay close attention to the stats. There was also a preview of the current guild layout.
I went to the testimonials category on the application page, and was pleasantly pleased to find warm and kind remarks about the guild. On one hand, this is a great thing to have because it shows people what the members think of this guild. On the other hand, if anyone thought anything badly, I'm sure it wouldn't be posted here =P So it depends on your perspective on it I suppose. Showing a date when these people joined would be GREAT to show how loyal your members are.
Their rules were simple, but very in-depth which was good. Follow the rules of TNT, be literate, remain active or let them know if you won't be able to OR there'll be a cleanout (which I think is excellent - every guild should keep up to date on cleanouts). Don't spam, and only join on one account.
Their application was... nonexistant! I thought that was pretty cool, you just make up your own, tell them a bit about yourself. I think that's a great way to make sure people are actually literate and to get a taste of their personality. A lot of applications are just... so bland and "say this say that okay we'll neomail back if we want you." It was nice that this was different.
If you click "And?" on their application page, it's giving you more of the necessary information you need as a new member which again is very brief and to the point. They tell you to introduce yourself, look at the website, and when you've reached twenty posts you can join a dynasty.
I had to wait for an invite, and it was rather early in the morning so I wasn't sure I'd get one right away. The application page links to the website, so I moved right on ahead while I waited.
It made nice use of some animated images of Neopets, but overall it was very bland. Too simplistic, in my opinion. I moved along looking at the different pages. They had a contact list which showed the council members and sort of what their main jobs were, what they'd be able to help you with specifically, and I liked that. Dividing up the work between council is definitely necessary if you want your guild to be successful, and it was clear this guild had done just that.
The dynasties were VERY cool, but I didn't like how they showed you on the quiz which answer was a quality of which dynasty. It completely defeats the purpose of a sorting quiz, because people will just pick what they want to be on whatever team still and if that's the case, why not just ask them what team they want to be on and be done with it?
They offered some fonts, some nice banners and a lookup, there was an adoption agency, the usual sorts of pages any neo-related guild would probably have. They had some activities, some were the familiar kind of any other neo-related guild (though different variations on the names) and others I wasn't sure I had seen before so that was sort of interesting. There was definitely enough of them, there could always be more of anything of course but I wouldn't say their activities were lacking by any means.
One thing I thought was REALLY cool was their "board" page. They had a list of the different games that could be played on the message boards, and I think that's a great way to keep the message boards active and the members involved. A lot of people I've found in my experience don't like going to activity pages, they like to just chat and only chat. But, if you have a message board game on the go, they may participate and have fun with it. So I really liked this idea. They also had different clubs for people who like other kinds of "themes" - the three featured currently was a Twilight club, a writer's club, and a music club. I thought that was cool as well and a way to cater to all different interests members may have. They also had a rather current event running - celebrating the release of the new Harry Potter movie, which I thought was yet again another cool way to be catering to the various interests of the members.
They had some guides to help you with your regular Neopets needs, as well as the dailies links. One thing I would suggest for the dailies links is splitting them up a bit more, they're clumped together so it's hard to tell where one link ends and another begins without hovering it.
They had a very nicely organized newspaper, a nice screenies page that was a bit more extensive than the one on their application page.
Overall with the content, though I wasn't blown away, there was certainly a lot offered and I could tell that the members were a big concern. I had received my invite, so I proceeded to chat with some of the members. From this I learned that there had been a very recent cleanout, the members seemed very active. When I first posted, only two people were on BUT the old posts showed me that they had their periods when many people were on at once. In fact, while I left to have dinner, I came back to find a lot more people on. I enjoyed talking to them, they talked about a lot of things I think most people would be interested in (books, music, movies, random-ness) and it just was very easy to talk to them.
When I very first rated this guild, I liked it a lot. Now that I've gotten an inside look, I still like it. The guild layout changed while I was there - both of them were simplistic, but still very easy on the eyes, creative, and nice. There was no council chat to sort of show what's going on with the different council members, but they did show who updated what section on the content area which was nice to see. Usually I would say that there needs to be more information on the main page, but considering most people would be viewing the website and the application page FIRST, then joining, this doesn't really lower their shot at getting new members. If anything it helps keep things tidy.
This guild is a great discussion guild, it has some relatively unique aspects, lots of things to get involved in, and is definitely great for any neo-related lover. They don't just talk about Neopets all the time, either - thus the purpose of their clubs - which makes it enjoyable for people who aren't really sure what kind of guild they might want to join. I enjoyed my time in this guild, and I can see the members do as well. They were all very kind and welcoming.
First Impression: 7/10
Content: 35/40
Layouts: 10/20
Member Activity: 30/30
Grand Total: 82/100
Celeb/Fashion
None yet.
Warriors
None yet.
Roleplay
Akumu
Reviewed by Jess.Akumu is a relatively new roleplay guild based around vampires. I was very curious to start reviewing this guild, because I somewhat like roleplay myself (being a fan of writing) and vampires have always been a fascination to me. The main guild layout was nice, often I find roleplay guilds just don't have a layout or do nothing with it. One thing I will recommend is having a larger content area in the future - even if it's just wider but still small. I find wider content areas better than narrow, because it's more friendly for reading the content in the box. This is a personal opinion though :)
The layout was just some cool brush affects, black and various shades of red, to fit in with the vampire/nightmare type theme. Also, the links that you hover turn red, which is also the colour of the content area. I'd suggest making it turn a colour that stands out more. I realize it's not a big deal since if you're hovering it, you likely know what it is - it'd be worse if it was reversed and they were red unless you hovered them - but, even still.
There was a council chat, no updates to speak for BUT they are very new and their welcome message stated as much. I also approved of them requesting that their members follow all the requirements and read all the requirements on any board they go to advertise on. It shows they care about when they are advertising, which also hints that they probably care more about the quality of their members than quantity. I cannot stress enough the importance of this. It's not being mean as long as you're nice about it ^^
I checked out the website which, again, was under construction, but that wasn't what my problem was. There were different images that all looked EXACTLY THE SAME at a first glance, used as headers. They were way too huge for headers, so it took forever to load. I realize I have dial-up; things tend to take longer. But this was just ridiculous, the guild layout itself took less time to load, and other guilds who've had more images have taken less time to load. I began wondering why there was a different image that I had to load seperately when they all said the same thing. After looking closer, I realized you could SOMEWHAT see that they said "Link" or "FAQ" to tell what that section was about. I was completely annoyed, because for one you can barely see that, for another, these are headers, you can make headers look nice without having them be nearly 400px in height. That's larger than even most BANNERS should be, let alone a header. I appreciate they were trying to make it look cool, but all it achieved for me was being completely frustrating because I had to refresh the page several times for anything to load, and it looked ridiculous next to their content which again, is under construction which I understand, but it made what was there seem so unimportant because all you have are these gigantic headers thrown at you. Really, really didn't like that. They looked nice, but they were too much for me.
In regards to the content featured, there was an FAQ section though no questions yet, a place to feature all the characters which is still under construction but looking good so far, and some good rules that I liked - some specific to roleplaying, some specific to the guild, and others specific to what should be common sense but unfortunately doesn't seem to be for a lot of people (such as no spamming :P You'd think people would know not to, buuut they don't. Or some don't.)
I then joined the guild and went to the message board. It didn't look very active; initially all I saw was most posts being hours and hours apart. By reading them, I saw that someones posts must have been deleted (perhaps by TNT or another member) because they were talking to someone whose posts weren't there, and normally that's because they've been deleted :P So, I gave them the benefit of the doubt there that maybe that person whose posts were all deleted, was on with them which would make it seem a bit better.
The two owners were by far the most active, which is good. It's important for owners to be active. There were five members other than myself, so the message board activity wasn't a huge deal. I posted, then I happened to notice that the admin area had been opened for me. I looked at the member list and saw they all have stars next to their name. Now, if they've all actually been given admin, I would say that is a very unwise decision (unless it's just message board admin for deleting posts or something) but considering it showed up for me and, to my knowledge, I had none? I'm wondering if it was a glitch. Sooo I can't really judge one way or another here, but a good tip for in case its NOT a glitch is to never give out admin to everyone just because they join, message admin might be one thing to help keep the message boards clean, but admin should be something earned, not given away to people who just join.
Again, that's probably not even the case because it didn't actually have any admin spots I could check out, the header just loaded as if I had the admin which was... kinda strange.
I posted at 10:28am (NST) and let it sit to go do other things for awhile.
The next day at 11:04am (NST) I came back to find that only one person had greeted me in over twenty-four hours. New or not, that's a bit extreme. I'd seen more than enough for my review and took my leave.
This guild has potential, but in all actuality it needs a lot of work to be done before I'd call it fully-functional. When it comes to roleplay, something that is done on the message boards, you really need an active guild because I personally believe that roleplaying hours apart would be rather boring and I myself would be moving on to the next guild if I had to. The roleplay hasn't officially started yet, which is good. Work on getting some /active/ members in this guild; advertise lots, encourage your current members do the same, and at the very least the members should be on a little more frequently. I would also recommend fixing up the website to be a bit more convenient and less annoying to navigate through. Under construction or not, there are little things you can do right from the start to make things nice for pre-joiners while you're setting things up, and though the layout looked nice enough, there really wasn't anything else to be appealing.
First Impression: 6/10
Content: 10/40
Layouts: 8/20
Member Activity: 10/30
Grand Total: 34/100
Themeless
Tomber.
Reviewed by Jess.Tomber is a themeless guild that was established a little over a week prior to being reviewed, almost thirty members and over two thousand messages. The layout was highly annoying for my computer in the sense that I had this positively hideous horizontal scrollbar at the bottom. It also had one of those content areas with the opacity, but this had waaaaaaay too much opacity. It didn't look nice at all, because it went from one extreme - can't even really see it at all - to the next.
I decided to overlook this stuff because that's all just personal issues I have and a lot of other people in general, don't seem to mind, so whatever, a trend is a trend. The layout in general was nice, I found it a bit of a strange combination of themes on the layout but it looked nice enough. I did question why there was a "join/chat" link at the top, when you can see the join and chat link - as well as the stats and whatever else - perfectly fine waaaaaay over on the other end of the image. (Which was also annoying. I understand some people have larger monitors, but the default links and stats is so far away from the content that for those of us who don't, it's really annoying to have to scroll way over to the right just to read your content. Maybe in the future, if you have a layout that allows your stats to be shown, keep your main content near it and put the image on the other side of it. I don't know about the people joining your guild, but I personally prefer content over snazzy layouts, and would much rather see it first.)
There was a lot of different bits of info in the content area, talking about the guild in general, prejoining it, there was a notice about roleplaying which I think is cool that you have a roleplay site for those who like it. You're not the first guild to do that, by any means, but its nice when guilds do that because people DO enjoy that sort of thing and I find its more organized than roleplaying AND chatting on a guilds message boards. I also liked how you called your council chat "speak up", kinda cool, and it was nice to hear from the individual owners.
I went to check out the website, and was disappointed. Not with what they had - with the fact that I couldn't /see/ it. I'm sure what they had was wonderful, but again because they designed a layout for wider monitors, I would have had to scroll - only there was no scrollbar. Their loss, I suppose, since I wasn't going to go through the source code just to see what was there. In the future, make sure your layouts are compatible for more browsers, and that you're making it compatible for more peoples computers in general. I get up to the "roleplay" section and the rest is gone for me. This will cause some deductions, because if I was an actual member, it would feel as though I was being punished for not having a wider monitor. That's not fair. It's also frustrating, because I get to see two of the themes that I basically have little or no interest in, and the rest, whatever they may be, are lost to me. Again - oh well, I suppose.
Enough about that. The rankings are cool, they're random and yet some throw in the odd theme for those of us who love certain things (such as "Vampire" and "Weasley") and they have higher rank standards than a lot of the guilds I've been seeing lately, so bravo for that - it was certainly nice to see. There wasn't anything there for neo-related, but they are working on getting it up, whether it be activities or apparently a plot which would be very interesting to see. They have an off-site roleplay board, which I personally like because I find roleplaying at the actual guild (though this is not a roleplay guild so that wouldn't happen anyway) is sloppy and hard to keep up. I like organized roleplay, and that is what this would offer. The roleplay site looked okay, had quite the weird combination of colours, but with some practice it'll probably get easier to make skins. I didn't stick around there, I'm sure it'll be great when it's put into service.
That was about it for the website. Like stated before, I couldn't see the rest of it, so off I went to check out the other pages. (I will say that I liked the different coloured boxes though.) The yearbook also had colourful boxes, a fair amount of the members had filled it out and it showed a wide variety of their interests to help figure out who you might have something in common with.
By the adoption agency, though, I was finding this kind of layout really repetitive. It was all the same. Maybe different coloured boxes, but all with the same grey background and it just got... I don't know. There needed to be a bit more variety. Even changing up the background colour might have helped. The adoption agency seemed in order though, lots of pets pretty early on in the guild. I liked their fonts, and there was a bit of variety which was nice. I looked at the team pages - I liked them, though I didn't particularly like how the "future authors" team was automatically referred to as the roleplayers. Not every person who enjoys to write, enjoys roleplay. Though I understand that if someone likes to roleplay, they'd make good future authors, so perhaps that's where that came from. The other rankings (avatards, octopi, and kacheeks) were all very fitting in regards to what each team description.
I went on to the guild to post, and right away the person who asked me to review the guild informed the rest of the members who I was. In general, I don't really care because I don't hide it by any means, but it seemed sort of like a little nudge saying be on your best behaviour kiddies, we've got someone here writing something up about us. Thankfully, no one seemed to act out of the ordinary, I didn't stay and post long because I didn't think it was necessary to get a feel of the guild. I was greeted by a fair amount of members, talked a wee bit with them though again not for long. A page went by pretty quickly in posts, so they seemed active when I was on, and they were all working together advertising and brainstorming for their grand opening, which was nice to see the members and owners working together.
The guild account of course had very few posts which was understandable, but the owners on their personal accounts had less posts than their members, which was a bit... interesting. It's nice to see they have active members, though. A few with zero posts who just joined a few days ago. Seems pretty active, not overwhelming and not underwhelming. Cozy.
I think this guild is nice, it's definitely trying to work towards having a lot of work put into it. I had some problems with the website of course which was very inconvenient, I'm not sure if I'm the only one with this problem, but out of the billions of people in the world, and however many on Neopets, I somehow doubt that. In the future, making more user-friendly layouts might be a preferable choice, but who knows, I may be part of the minority here. Still, that minority matters just as much. The guild is great for people looking for a new guild off to a great start to help create something amazing, I'm sure they'd appreciate people joining even just to chat and hang out, and everyone seems pretty close and welcoming.
First Impression: 6/10
Content: 20/40 - couldn't see it all.
Layouts: 10/20 - compatibility issues.
Member Activity: 25/30
Grand Total: 61/100
Other
Creative Therapy.
Reviewed by Tommy.Creative Therapy is the first guild I reviewed for Simply Guilds. I am pretty impressed by their layout. I love the blend of it. However, I am not to fond of the bottem scrollbar. Side scrollbars are fine but I do not like having to scroll left and right. It took me a few minutes to realize that it did scroll sideways. The website layout is pretty good as well. The theme and colors are constant throughout every page.
Creative Therapy has some pretty good content. The website is full of content. I was impressed when I first checked out the website. It seem like there is plenty for the members to do in this guild, however a few more activities would be good. The content looks pretty original, which is not something I can say for every guild.
My first couple of thoughts that came to my mind were, "This is a neat layout.", "Oh wow, almost every post on the first page is someone asking if anyone is on." I was not impressed that it took three hours before someone posted after mine. The owner seems very nice and is easy to talk to. The ranking system is pretty bland as well. When I looked at the member list, it looked as if they used the ranking system given by neopets.
Overall, the guild seems pretty good. I might of joined it if I was not the reviewer. If you are more into activites rather than chatting, this would be a guild you should consider. Creative Therapy is pretty impressive for just being created on July 1st, 2009.
First Impression: 8/10
Content: 38/40
Layouts: 17/20
Member Activity: 24/30
Grand Total: 87/100
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If I have reviewed your guild, you are asked to link back somewhere on your guild (website, portal, anywhere.)