Skin Standards? Options

[Shelley464]

Hi there!

First of all, I have to say that this is a kick-butt site. It's easy to navigate and use and a great source for skins.

Secondly, I just wanted to voice a concern. I get confused sometimes by what standards the skins are being accepted under. It seems that what one mod would accept, another wouldn't. In the end, it's almost a matter of who you get reviewing your submission. So, I'm not complaining and in no way think that you guys hate me when I get rejected. :P It's just that I see such a broad spectrum of skins on here and see no line of standards, which makes it hard to understand what is considered good on the whole. Just a bit of feedback. Thanks again for a great site!

[talcumpowder]

I feel the need to reply to this topic. Blah. If I sound bitchy, forgive me.
----
Okay, when we reject a layout and you want to yell at us asking why there are two things I'd like you to remember. One, when there's 50 skins in the queue and 20 are Xanga I will not remember your layout. Okay? So show it to me and I'll tell you why I rejected it. Two, I follow this for the most part. Then I have a set of standards I personally follow when submitting a skin so I apply those to other people's skin's too. They are as follows.
----
- High quality, non-grainy image. A good sixth of the layouts I reject lack this. Even MS Paint can have good image quality.
- Nice, readable text and hyperlinks. If I can't read it, then how can anyone else?
- A fairly decent color scheme. Purple does not go with brown and there's too much contrast in red&black.
- A decent sized image. A 900KB image isn't very practical. Your main image shouldn't go over 500KB usually.
- A non-default layout. You can not stick in a background, change the colors, and call it a day. Simplistic is good, but a layout like that will take you five minutes, tops. That's on a Myspace level to me. (Not including the div overlays!)
----
If you think that's too much to ask for, then that's too bad. Really, all I look for is a skin that looks decent and that has effort put into it. Cross-browser compatibility would be nice too.

[sweetabandon]

I feel the need to reply to this topic. Blah. If I sound bitchy, forgive me.
----
Okay, when we reject a layout and you want to yell at us asking why there are two things I'd like you to remember. One, when there's 50 skins in the queue and 20 are Xanga I will not remember your layout. Okay? So show it to me and I'll tell you why I rejected it. Two, I follow this for the most part. Then I have a set of standards I personally follow when submitting a skin so I apply those to other people's skin's too. They are as follows.
----
- High quality, non-grainy image. A good sixth of the layouts I reject lack this. Even MS Paint can have good image quality.
- Nice, readable text and hyperlinks. If I can't read it, then how can anyone else?
- A fairly decent color scheme. Purple does not go with brown and there's too much contrast in red&black.
- A decent sized image. A 900KB image isn't very practical. Your main image shouldn't go over 500KB usually.
- A non-default layout. You can not stick in a background, change the colors,  and call it a day. Simplistic is good, but a layout like that will take you five minutes, tops. That's on a Myspace level to me. (Not including the div overlays!)
----
If you think that's too much to ask for, then that's too bad. Really, all I look for is a skin that looks decent and that has effort put into it. Cross-browser compatibility would be nice too.

Hm. Yeah, most of these rules are pretty much common sense...except for the image size. perhaps it should be added to the official rules mentioned here [ http://www.createblog.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=77054 ]. I didn't know about this link. I'm a big dumb butt for not even looking. Still I think they should put this link up on the page where people submit their skins. You know, for the dumb butts like me who think the only thing that matters is whats in front of them.

Another thing, that screen shot tip is really helpful! Thanx!