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Site Name: Junk Extreme
Owner: Kerry
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 24th February 2009
Site Name
It’s easy to remember and sounds cool!
Coding and Validation
Congratulations, your coding is valid XHTML!
Your CSS is also valid.
Great job, saves me a lot of work and shows you take pride in the foundations of your site as well.
Browser Compatibility & Usability
According to Browsershots.org your site looks good in most browsers. It’s a good thing the layout is centered too!
Your navigation is very clear, and your text is easy to read.
Layout
It’s simple and looks very clean and fresh. The header image is simple but I like the textured background which adds just that bit of interest.
As I mentioned, the navigation is very clear.
There aren’t many colours in the CSS which is a shame. It’s be nice to see a little variation between the colours of bold and the links, for instance. I think you could squeeze a slightly different blue in there – the same blue everywhere gets a little boring.
Content
About
I think it’s very unique you have a site model! And I was unaware that you own the site with someone else.
I’m a little unsure about ‘Advertising’ being in an ‘About’ section.
PayPal needs to be capitalised.
‘Affiliated’ – self explanatory.
Your one-off payments on hosting are not bad, though I wouldn’t agree with the prices, personally. A one-off payment is a good idea but maybe not for people who move around a lot.
The network page is a nice idea. Maybe having a couple of links in the sidebar or footer for these?
If the forum is ‘coming soon’, I wouldn’t place it there just yet!
Past Designs are all very nice. I think the pink and orange would’ve been boring after a while!
I was unsure of what ‘Recommend us’ would lead to. It’s a series of link buttons. I didn’t expect that – normally I see links like ‘Link Back’.
Articles
Not the ‘coming soon’ again! It leaves the visitor with the impression that something’s unfinished.
I’ve heard about the link between copyright violation and celebrity images and have seen many articles on it, but you’ve written yours in a unique way, comparing it with the use of stock images. I like that!
Your article on commenting is well set out and you’ve addressed concerns I’ve never really noticed in other articles about commenting – such as causing offense.
It’s nice to answer questions on a blog, but there are issues with that. Some people think that just answering the questions isn’t really a comment and shows laziness!
The article on hosts is simple, but maybe expanding on reseller/shared.. some people may not be familiar with these terms
Keeping a Safe Site and Making Money were both very good articles. I actually enjoyed reading them. They were well set out with subheadings.
You mention not to have ‘coming soon’ pages on your New Site article. Remove yours! 
The site names article is fairly good.
I like the idea of interviews! Maybe you should write ‘Interviews with Website Owners’, or something similar.
Portfolio
The graphic designs are a mixture of good and not too good. I don’t like the forest one or the ones with the flowers. They seem a little too saturated and I don’t like the colours. I do like the others though.
The photography’s good, the thumbnails are neat like the designs.
Webdesign shows another site you’ve designed. It shows the same professionalism as Junk Extreme!
Resources
It would be better to have all the download and all the graphics links on the same page, just under headings. It would really save some subpages and there’d be less clicking.
The brushes come in PSP, PS, GIMP brushes and an imagepack. That’s great for usability!
These brushes are simple but could be used for a range of things and in different ways. They could be better, but they’re quite good at the moment.
Colour schemes – I’ve seen them all the time and on many sites. People should really be able to pick their own colour schemes.
You shouldn’t be offering these fonts on your site – because in most cases you shouldn’t be distributing other people’s work. Fonts included.
Some of your free layouts are very simple and have a plain header image. They look good though, as do the ones with photography used. You’ve also ensured they are valid in coding and CSS. Excellent job.
The Paint Shop Pro scripts are well organised to clearly show the original and after image. Most of these scripts are good.
‘Programs’ is just a list of external links to useful programs.
Your smilies should have proper previews of the entire smiley set, not just one big grinning one! 
The website templates are neat. I’ve seen them before though.
To the graphics section now.
The bullets are nice. Some are quite plain, others have shading added. I prefer the shaded ones.
I don’t see how the cursors could be used, unless they’re in a cursor file format. They’re just graphic files at the moment.
You have a variety of sizes, but you should make all different pictures in all sizes you offer. Some are only offered in one size.
The icon bases are just that -plain bases. But there’s a good variety and they all look pretty good.
Textures – make a note to click the thumbnail for a bigger view. These are not bad, some don’t look as appealing though.
Shop
Fairly straightforward. With the premades, what exactly is the difference between exclusive and not exclusive?
On the webdesign page, you have a link to a contact page. You should have this in your ‘About’ section as well as the sidebar.
There is a link to a ‘Hire Us’ page. The bullets on this page are right at the edge of your layout. That’s the only problem.
Tutorials
The cPanel tutorials are fairly good, they’re more in depth compared to the information on cPanel itself, but otherwise not very special.
The CSS tutorials go through things, but don’t fully explain CSS to someone who doesn’t know a thing about it.
I don’t really like Cutenews tutorials beecause Cutenews isn’t as safe as, say, WordPress or FanUpdate as it doesn’t use a mySQL database. But the tutorials are pretty good.
You go through HTML very simply here, with an example of code and what it looks like. That’s great!
On your ‘About XHTML’ tutorial, there’s really no need for the ‘More XHTML tutorials’ link at the bottom.
On your ‘Valid XHTML’ tutorial, half the tutorial is in bold because of this little piece of code:
<b><b> with <b>/></b> at the end
You might want to fix that and close the bold tag. Also, the bullet next to the validator link is in at the edge of your layout.
The Javascript tutorials aren’t really my thing but they explain well.
Your form validation page has a different colour layout background. Oops.
I notice most of your tutorials are in XHTML, that is, they have the trailing backslash. That wouldn’t be too great for people in HTML.
The basic Paint Shop Pro tutorials.. are basic. They’re pretty simple.. like saving an image or resizing. The advanced ones are better. All in all, they’re neat, and useful. Well set out/
I’d like to see more PhotoShop tutorials. On the beams tutorial, the bullets you have are again on the edge of your layout.
I like your PHP forms tutorial. It’s so easy to understand unlike many out there. I think you need to explain the require function in layman’s terms, though.
I’m not all too familiar with VistaPanel or WordPress but they seem to be done very well.
‘Code a Website’ is pretty good. The request and one-to-one help is pretty self explanatory.
Originality & Creativity
Most graphics were original. There was nothing I questioned except perhaps the fonts could go. Also, a credits page is needed. To credit your photo sources, and your content management system.
The tutorials are great and written well, but they’re all ones I could probably find on other sites.
There were many creative things I saw in the graphics you make. You’ve done a great job.
Organisation & Errors
Fairly well organised. Just a few errors here and there. Grammar and spelling was excellent!
I didn’t find broken links or images.
Overall Comment
Your site was interesting to go through, Kerry. I really liked the articles in particular. The tutorials didn’t interest me too much, but they are written very well.
Your layout could use more colours than just blue and black. Another totally different colour could be incorporated into your layouts. You used pink and orange before, now add blue with other combinations. The same blue got a bit boring after a while.
The site was very professional and well organised. A little more colour in your layout would really help, and I’d personally like to see more articles and a few more graphics.
