Almost black and white, but with a touch of green, HowToPlant.net's most redeeming feature is its header with a nice, artistic albeit black and white view of a tree in the field with birds in the sky. Nice, and relevant to the topic at hand. The whole site is designed to throw a shadow on its background making it seem like a realistic piece of paper held before you. Another nice tricks involves a main menu that is basically set in the grass. :)

Not bad, but there are things that could be better. There's something fishy about color choices of some elements. The search box lacks its own distinct background so it completely blends with the background of the sidebar. Just a simple white with a dark gray border wont hurt here. Furthermore, background color of info boxes with date and "posted by" info as well as category and comments info is still a little too close to the background color of the page. The simplest way to fix it is to have the border go around the entire box rather than just the top or changing the background color to pure white (#fff) or gray that is darker enough than the background of the page. Alternatively, there doesn't have to be a background color for these areas. Top border may be enough.

Everything else seems pretty decent.

Design Rating: 9/10

Focus:

I almost have nothing to say here. Everything is obvious. From the domain name, title, slogan to the titles of content. HowToPlant.net, indeed, tells you how to plant stuff that can be planted. Judging by categories we are shown how to plant fruits, trees and vegetables, how to make a garden and what are the planting techniques.

Focus Rating: 10/10

Content:

There is one category, "uncategorized", which is empty unless we can count a default wordpress "Hello World" entry. There is also an about page which is a default wordpress theme about page as well. It's probably clear what should be done with these. Remove the empty category from navigation (and the post) and fill up that about page with a nice pitch about the site.

With these little bloopers out of the way we can pay attention to what's great; 50 articles about planting (and I do assume this number will grow) in 5 relevant categories written in an usually focused, relatively brief articles split into nice sections. Articles also sometimes employ a more casual style that appeals to the reader and makes for a more relaxed while still enlightening reading. In fact judging from a sample (such as one about planting onion sets, and yes I'm among those who like onions), it's a pleasure to read (and I can almost smell onions).

Good work content wise, as usual, but with that little flop with the uncategorized category and the default about page which unfortunately tend to detract from the image of professionalism a bit. It's the only thing keeping it from a 10/10.

Content Rating: 9/10