Before I start, I don’t like MySpace. Most of the pages look ugly. Yes, I said it, UGLY and I’m not the first to say it. The majority of them have text you can’t read because the background image is too busy and they never changed the color of the text so you can actually read it. The backgrounds also repeat so that doesn’t help either.
The other problem is the amount of pages that have content that children should not be seeing (also known as pornography). Great, I’m sure I’ll receive plenty of visits on that word alone. MySpace doesn’t seem to do much about the problem; I’ve seen so many of these types of pages. And, of course, they can’t allow a mother breastfeeding on one. What’s wrong with people?
Now, on to the real topic of this entry. I get a lot of visits from people looking for MySpace, because my domain used to be www.myphotoalbumspace.com, but I had decided to change it because it didn’t reflect what my blog was really about. Since I still receive visits for it, I thought I would help by providing resources for MySpace, but also resources that help make a MySpace page look better, not ugly.
Music Player
If you’re going to have music available on your MySpace page, (or anywhere for that matter) please do not allow it to automatically play when the page is loaded. That is the most annoying feature. Let your visitors decide if they want to play music.
Here is an MP3 player generator that allows you to select the option of not playing the music when the page is loaded. Select the No radio button, by default Yes is selected.
Add the URLs to the MP3s that you want available in the playlist. Again, select the No radio button so the music is not played when the page is loaded. Then click Generate the Code. Copy and paste this code into your MySpace page.
Use the Flash MP3 Player Generator to generate a MP3 Player with the MP3s you choose.
Friend Space
Customize your Friend Space to look how you want it to. There is a Friend Space Generator that will allow you to customize it with many options. After you first change an option, the preview box automatically displays how your Friend Space will appear.
Use the Friend Space Generator to generate your own customized Friend Space code.
Profile
Customize how your Profile is displayed. The Profile Editor has so many options to make your Profile look better! Customize the background, sections, headings and the main text by choosing colors, border, opacity, transparency, size and more. Below is a preview of a customized one I created to show an example of what it can do.
It is not very hard to achieve the example above. The options are all self-explanatory so it is easy to customize using the editor. Much easier than creating the code yourself unless you know CSS.
Use the Profile Editor to generate custom CSS code for your Profile.
Nav Bar
This next one is a Nav Bar Generator. It lets you customize the default MySpace Nav Bar. Change the color, link separator and the links.
Use the Nav Bar Generator to generate a customized Nav Bar.
Colors
Need help choosing the right colors for your page? There is a Color Code Picker that will help you find colors without having to guess which code is what color.
Use the Color Code Picker to get color codes.
Credits
You may notice the above resources are located at Mashable. They have a lot of resources for MySpace, but, obviously I didn’t include them all. I didn’t like the layouts or the images. Most of them are too flashy or ugly. There’s that word again. And, yes, it is just my opinion!
Manually Customizing Your MySpace Page
I found a blog entry by Mike Davidson about Hacking MySpace Layouts. I recommend reading this if you would like to customize the CSS for your MySpace page without the use of generators listed above. It really is very easy and he includes plenty of helpful tips. Check out what he did to his MySpace page.
Other Resources
Here is a list of other places that I did not mention above, but are available for you to browse through for more layouts and generators.
Please note that many of these websites may include the same things. But, you may find something different at each one.
Now go make beautiful MySpace pages!
Need inspiration? Check out Derek’s MySpace page, KG’s MySpace page, Andrew’s MySpace page and Ben’s MySpace page. Or, you could just Stop MySpacing altogether.
MeeMix lets you customize the music you listen to and have different stations. This is handy if you only want to listen to a specific genre. MeeMix can also be set to surprise you with the music you listen to. Even change the volume so you don’t have to change the volume on your speakers!
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