How to Pimp Your MySpace Page with Profile 2.0

Have you ever wondered how to get one of those awesome personalized MySpace pages? But each time you look, all you can find is a lot of scary pages talking about HTML code? Never fear, pimping your MySpace page isn't as difficult as you think. The recently released Profile 2.0 makes it easier than ever to have a fully customized MySpace page. Let's have a look at how we might go about pimping up our profile page on MySpace using Profile 2.0.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. The first thing to do is to log into your MySpace page and click on the Edit Profile link. This is usually somewhere in your “About Me” box. Next you will need to locate the Customize Profile link and click on it.

2. Once this has loaded you should see your MySpace page with a large gray bar above it. This bar is where we will make our changes. It has a few basic components, you will notice that it is split into three columns. One has icons labeled appearance and modules, appearance is how you MySpace page looks, as you probably guessed, and modules is where you can add extra boxes. The contents of the other columns depends on which of these two you have clicked on. We'll start with the basics and look at the appearance first

3. When you open the customize profile link, you will see a second column with icons labeled: Select Theme, Change Layout, Advanced Edit , and CSS. We will leave CSS until the very last, as it is slightly more advanced than the others which are all fairly self explanatory.

4. With Select Theme selected, you will see a large column containing thumbnails of MySpace themes. At the top right, there is a little blue arrow which you can use to scroll through the available default themes.
   
   To select one, simply click on it's thumbnail. If you want to see what it looks like as a full size MySpace page, click on the Preview button in the top left. When you have finished previewing, simply click on the customize button, located in where the Preview button was in the top left.
   
   Choose yourself a MySpace theme you like, and we'll move on to Change Layout.

5. When you select change layout, you will see something very close to the themes window, except it will have illustrations of different arrangements of boxes for your MySpace page. The process is exactly the same as it is for themes. Simply select the one you think you like, check it out on preview and move on once you are happy.

6. Advanced Edit in MySpace Profile 2.0, is pretty much what it sounds like. This is a place where you can change background and font colors for each of your MySpace boxes or modules. This section is split into five: Background, Content, Modules, Module Headers and Module Boxes. Background, Content and Modules all have basically the same options, so we will look at them as one group, and the last two, as another group.

7. ) Background, Content and Modules, all have the same basic options for customizing your MySpace page. These are Color, Url, Scroll With Page, Position and repeat. Color has a drop down menu containing a color picker and a text box where you can enter an hex color code.
   
   The easiest way of manipulating this is to click around in the color picker until you have the color you are after. Url is where you place the url of a picture. This allows you to use a picture as your MySpace page background.
   
   The next option, Scroll with page, is once again fairly self explanatory. If you are unsure, most boxes have defaults which you can use, but as there are only two options, yes or no, you may prefer to simply use the preview button, and scroll up or down on your MySpace page to see whether you are happy with your selection.
   
   The final selection is most relevant if your are using an image as your MySpace background. This will either stretch the image across or down, tile the image, or display one of the image depending on your selection.
   
   Again the most effective way to decide on how to pimp your MySpace page with this selection is to check the preview button. Content and modules also have two more settings, Border and Padding, here you can set the size and color of the border of each box and how far apart they are from each other. Padding, the distance between them and your other modules is changed with a slider, as is size. Color is the same color picker as we encountered before.

8. Module Headers and Module Bodies have pretty much the same options, except you can change your MySpace font, font size and font colors here. This will change the look of the text and headers on your MySpace page. You can even use bold and italics, or orient the text to either side or in the center. Play around a little and remember to check your preview button to see how your pimped profile is going.

9. Now we'll go and look at the extra modules we can add, or remove if we want. You will notice, that some of the modules have smiley faces, others have gray pluses. The ones with smiley faces are already on your MySpace page, and the ones with gray plus signs are the ones you can add. If you hover your mouse over one of the smiley faces, you will see it turn into a red x, simply click the red x to remove that module from your MySpace page.
   
   Click on the gray plus to add any modules you want but don't already have. Now we have covered the very basics of pimping your MySpace page in profile 2.0, it is time to move on and have a look at the CSS section.

10. Let's click on appearance again, and select the last option, CSS. You will see a text box. This is where we can enter any customs codes we want to add to our MySpace profile. If you are already comfortable with CSS and HTML languages, simply start coding to your little heart’s content.
    
    Luckily, for those of us who aren't so technically proficient, there are many MySpace code generators on the net. See the resources for some I have found useful. If you are using a code generator, simply find the code you are looking, for example glitter or glowing text, and copy and paste it into the text box. Something to bear in mind, is that if the code calls for a color, it needs to be a hex value. See the resources section for an excellent online color picker.

11. Once you have completed all of your changes and are happy with what you have seen in the preview of your MySpace page, it is a simple matter to hit the yellow publish button in the top right corner of the gray box. This will publish all of the pimping changes you made to your MySpace page. If you decide you want to go back to the last layout you had on your freshly pimped MySpace page, it is a simple matter to click the Go Back button at the top of your screen while you are in the Profile Editor.

Tips & Warnings

• Don't worry if you aren't a programmer or coder, use one of the many code generators available to pimp your MySpace page.
• If your code isn't displaying, you may have to go and select “No Theme” under the Select Theme icon.
• If the code really won't work, check that it is compatible with Profile 2.0.

[ynohtna]

on 7/20/2009 Good tips thanks 5*

[Psalmist4M]

on 5/17/2009 Very informative, great content and details. Thanks for a great article. 5*s

[sonni57]

on 5/17/2009 Promoting myspace can be fun and work at the same time.