if you make one joy, make the width just under 1024 pixels...the width of mine is 1000 exactly, anything less than that is way too small for today's standards. try to go with green/white or blue/white for colors.
stay away from large buttons like on darkexile.com and def dont use any of those fonts lol and dont put text crossing over lines of the layout. not trying to be rude, but darkexile.com layout is really bad imo, it doesn't show the true skills i know you have at all. looks like a layout you made after doing your first photoshop tutorial ever.
I'm not saying mine are any better because they aren't...i haven't been able to come up with anything i truly like yet at all, just trying to give you some input so if you do actually make a layout for me, that it ends up being something i might actually use and not have wasted your time and effort