How To Make Your MySpace Page Look Great

Step 1: Videos and music

Once you have set up your profile, consider adding videos and music that compliment your personality and make your profile more interesting for visitors. For example, if you are a fan of comedy, try searching a video website such as Youtube or break for a clip you really like and embedding it on your profile. Or if you have a favourite band and want one of their music videos on your page, look for them on Myspace by clicking on 'Music' in the Myspace navigation bar, then typing in the name of the band into the search engine. Once on their profile page, scroll down to find a music video and click 'Add to my profile' underneath it. To add music from a band, search Myspace music for the band, find a song you like on their profile, and click 'Add' to stick it on yours. This music will start playing as soon as people arrive on your page.

Watch VideoJug's 'How to upload media to your Myspace profile' for a detailed instruction on how to add these to your profile.

Step 2: Photos

Myspace allows you to upload up to 16 photos to your profile which people can view if they click 'Pics' underneath your default profile picture on the top left of your page. But to really jazz up your page you could consider adding a photo slideshow. To do this, go to a free photo hosting website such as www.photobucket.com.

On Photobucket, click 'Join now' on the top right of the screen. Enter a username and password then click to go to the next step. Next enter your name, gender, email address, and country of residence. Then type in the 'Weird code' you see into the text box beneath, and click 'I accept, sign me up'. Click 'Here' to continue. Now you can start adding images. Go to 'Browse', choose an image from your hard drive, and click 'Upload' to upload it into your album.

Once you have added all the photos you want, click on 'Slideshows' to start creating a slideshow. Select which images you want in your slideshow by clicking on the small cross next to them. The preview window will start playing your slideshow with the selected images. Adjust the style by selecting 'New styles' and find one you like. When finished, click 'Save slideshow'. You can now find your slideshows in 'View my slideshows here'. Each one will have a HTML tag next to it. Copy this, and return to your Myspace profile. Now paste this code into a section of your profile under 'Edit profile', such as the 'About me' section. When you view your profile, your slideshow will start playing.

Step 3: Finding a Myspace editor

Like any HTML webpage, your Myspace band profile is customizable - meaning you can change colours, fonts, and layouts to make it personalised. This may sound confusing, but luckily there are numerous websites that help you customize your profile.

Here are a few sites that are free and easy to use:
www.profilejuice.com
www.myspacehun.com
www.strikefile.com/myspace
www.mywackospace.com
www.myspace-editors.com

For the purposes of this film, we're going to use Thomas' Myspace Editor V4.4 on www.strikefile.com/myspace. This website allows you to choose what preferences you like and then gives you an HTML code at the end, which you then cut and paste into your 'Band bio' section to give you the design you requested.

Step 4: Using a Myspace Editor

In the top of Thomas' Myspace Editor are tabs which say 'Background', 'Text', 'Tables', 'Scrollbars', and 'Code'.

To begin with go to background. Click on 'Colour' on 'Page background colour' and choose something you like. Next decide whether you want an image in the background. If you do, select 'Yes' to background image. Then find an image on the internet that you want and copy and paste the URL into the 'Page background image URL' section. Now click preview to see what it looks like. Next decide if you want the background image to be in a certain position, tiled, or moving and select accordingly.

If you go to the text tab you can change the fonts of the main text on your page as well as the headings and the colour of your links.

Under the tables tab you're able to change the colour, style and thickness of the table borders that encase your details on your profile. You can also adjust the opacity of tables, their position, and also whether or not they have a background image. To insert a background image, as before find an image on the web, copy the URL from the address bar, and then paste in the 'Table Background Image URL' box.

When you click on the scrollbars tab you can adjust the colours in the scrollbars.

Once you have specified all your settings, click on the code tab. Now copy this code, return to your myspace profile, go to 'edit profile' and paste the code into your 'about me' section. Then return to your homepage and click on 'profile' to view your changes. If you want to change anything, go back the Thomas' Myspace editor and re-enter your settings changing whatever it is you would like to tweak. Then copy the new code it gives you and paste like before.

Step 5: Myspace layouts

If you can't be bothered to go through the rigmarole of tweaking your profile and you want a quick fix solution, simply look up an existing profile layout on the internet. Put 'Myspace layouts' into a search engine. There are loads of sites that provide free layouts. Find one you like and copy the HTML code. Then go to 'Edit profile' in your profile homepage, and go to the 'About me' section. Now paste this HTML code into this box, save settings, go back to your homepage then view your profile to see if you like it.

Step 6: Blogs

You can use the blog function on Myspace to keep people up to date with your thoughts, ideas, and general nonsense. It also has lots of customised functions to liven it up on your page. Go to 'Manage blog' on your profile page. Here not only can you post new blogs, but you can customise your blog in 'customise blog' under 'My controls'. In this section you can change the background colours, alignments, fonts, as well as inserting background images. Play with the settings until you are happy with how your blog looks. For some people a blog is very important, for others it's merely a sideline of your main profile homepage.