MySpace: Color Coordination, Contact Tables, and Banners

MySpace is a great site for making new friends and keeping in touch with old ones, but you might feel kind of left out if all of your other friends have very fancy, flashing MySpace pages. Don't worry, it's not that hard to take your plain white MySpace page and make it look great.

First, you'll want to change the colors, which can be done by using Google and a MySpace layout generator. Just hit a search engine and type in "MySpace colors" or something similar. You will find a page that will allow you to select colors from a list. The site will then generate code for you that you copy and paste over into the "about me" section of your profile. It's very simple, and the site should tell you everything you need to do.

Now, here's what the site won't tell you: you need to pick your colors with a general color scheme in mind. Bright green text on a bright yellow background with hot pink table borders will make visitors run screaming from your MySpace profile. Remember that people will be reading what's on your page, so pick a text color that stands out. If you are using a background picture on your profile, try to pick a picture that doesn't have too many different colors because it will be hard to find a text color that looks good and is readable across your entire profile.

Also, remember to coordinate your table borders and link colors as well. You don't want your links blending in to the background, nor do you want your border color to clash. MySpace is just like fashion: you want your profile to look good or people will mock you!

You've probably found places to download graphics to customize your contact table or your "extended banner" graphic (that spot above your blog that always says something like "this person is in your extended network). However, you can also create your own table and banner if you want. It's really not that hard. All you need is a photo editing program, some web space on a server (you can get free webspace through Yahoo-Geocities if you don't have any), and a little time.

Here's how to do it: First, go to a search engine and find any page with a custom contact table and extended network banner. Save one of each to your computer (it doesn't matter what they are or if you like them; you won't be using them for much). Now, open up PhotoShop or some other image editing program. Open the contact table.

Now, you want to create a new image (keep the other picture open) that is the same size as the contact table you've downloaded. How to do this all depends on your editing software, but usually doing a "file, new" command will give you a box that allows you to select your image size. Likewise, looking at the picture properties of the contact table should tell you its size in either inches or pixels. Use this information to make your new image.

Next, find the image you want to use. Remember that much of the image will have text over it (we'll get to that in a minute), so try to pick something that will look good with words on it. Also, remember to make sure it doesn't clash with your background!

OK, this is the tricky part. You see where all the words on the contact table you downloaded are (Message, Add Me, Chat, etc.)? You need to add those to your new table by creating text boxes on top of the graphic and typing the words in them. Here's the trick, though: you need to arrange the text boxes so that the words on your table are in about the same place as the words on the downloaded table. This is because MySpace code that you can't change turns "Message" into a link.

You can't change where this link is, so even if you put "Add Me" first on your table, if someone clicks on it, they will go to a new message. Even if you don't add any words at all, MySpace will make areas of your contact table link to the various commands. Now, save the finished picture as a .jpeg and upload it to your web space. Again, if you don't have web space, you can sign up for free for Geocities through Yahoo.

OK, now all you have to do is go back to that web page where you found the contact table and follow their instructions on how to put it on your profile. Usually, this just involves copying some code over into the "about me" section. Be sure to change the location of the image (ex: http://www.myspacegraphics.com/graphic.jpg) to the location of your image. Ta da! Now you have your very own unique contact table!

The same concept can be used with the extended banner graphic. Simply make a new image of the same size, modify it however you like (there are no links on the banner, so you don't have to add text or anything), then use the instructions on the profile modification website you found to add it.

There are many other things you can add to your MySpace page, including graphics, music, slideshows, videos, and animation. Some of these can be done on MySpace itself; others, you'll have to find from a search engine. Most of those pages have very good instructions and make it very easy to modify your profile. Just remember to keep the colors coordinated and to not overload your page with too many videos or flashy graphics. Your MySpace profile is your presentation of yourself to the world, so strive to make a great first impression!