How do I use these textures as My Space backgrounds?

For this tutorial you need:-

What is in this tutorial:-

  • Where to upload your backgrounds to
  • How to change an existing MySpace background
  • How to add a background if you don't have one
  • Basic table background code (so your content is clearly visible against a busy background!)
  • Additional table code tips
  • How to hide sections of your MySpace template (OT)
  • My Space Profile Editing Links (see also the Links page)

 

Where to upload your background images

At this time The Fat Strawberry does not provide image hosting for its textures (traffic is too low to justify the extra expense - go figure!) so you'll need to find an image host to upload images to that you want to use on your My Space page. Here are some free services you can use to store pictures and link to them to display on My Space or any other web site you want to customize - some may require registration:-

 

How to change an existing MySpace background

If you are using a template or have already set up your My Space profile so that it includes a background image for the page then in most cases you simply need to change the URL for the background image so it points to the new texture you want to use.

Alternatively if you want to discard an existing background you can rename your new texture so its called the same as the old one and upload it to the same place your old background is hosted. Next time you visit your My Space page the change should be automatic as long as the image is in the same format (i.e. if the old version was a gif your new background will need to be a gif too).

 

How to add a background if you don't have one

My Space editing can be intimidating for anyone who has no experience of html, css or any other programming language, that said - if I can learn to use it then frankly so can anyone!

 

 

Copy and paste the code in the box into the 'About Me' section in the Profile Edit screen.

Where it says 'background-image:url('http://www.yourwebsite/bg.jpg') - here you need to change the URL to the address where you've uploaded your background texture 

The Fat Strawberry doesn't currently provide image hosting for its textures as well so you'll need to find somewhere online where you can put your texture and put that link in instead of the highlighted part of the code.

 

i.e. if you named your new background bg.jpg and uploaded it to www.mywebsite.com/myspaceimages then you would need to put http://www.yourwebsite.com/bg.jpg in for the URL. Provided the site you're hosting it on doesn't have hotlink protection you should see your new background right away as soon as you save the changes and reload your My Space page.

Don't panic if the background is very bright or busy and you can't read the text - we can fix that too quite simply using table properties (see below).

 

Basic table background code

There are tons of sites with codes for background colours, images, borders etc but I didn't find many that had them both together other than in generators. Generators are great if you're a web-creation newbie BUT most of them will add text or other items to your visible page and of course you've no option on doing much tweaking and changing if you don't have a basic grasp of what is going on!

Here is a simple code that will give you plain coloured tables with a plain border. Again, copy and paste this into the 'About Me' section underneath your background code.

The hex codes can easily be changed so you can coordinate your border and table background colour with your new texture background and instantly make your page look more personal and easy to read!

The parts you need to edit are:-

border-color:000000 (currently black)
background-color:FFFFFF (currently white)

 

Hex numbers go from 0-9 and then A-F - the higher the value, the brighter the colour. There are 6 values in a hex colour code:

##/##/## = Red Red/Green Green/Blue Blue

If trial and error doesn't appeal to find the right colour combination for your table border and background then here is a list of 256 ready to pick colour codes. Alternatively if you want to match a specific colour you can use the colour dropper in your graphis program or download a colour match tool such as this Eyedropper program (instructions on the website).

 

Additional Table tips

The above code will give you plain tables with a 1 pixel wide border. If you want to make the border wider simply change the border-width:1 to border-width:2 or 3. 

You can also specify a second texture as your table background. 

If you want a second texture as the background for your tables as well as a border and your background image then use the code above but add this line into the middle after 'border-color:....'. Remember to change the URL to the address where your second background texture can be found!

 

My Space editing links

There are masses of resources for My Space editing so I've collected a few links to get you started rather than repeating more information which is already 'out there'. These are a few sites that I thought were particularly helpful but of course if you don't find what you're looking for then you can always try Googling for an answer.

 

Hiding Content tables

This is rather off-topic but it seems to be something that gets asked a lot by My Space newbies and I've seen so many variations on code that do this, some are long and complicated so here are the simplest versions I've found for getting rid of areas of the default template you don't want:-

To hide your profile paste this into the 'About Me' section
To show only your name and picture in your profile paste this at the END of the 'Headline' section
To hide the Extended Network box paste this into the 'About Me' section
To hide your blog paste this into the 'About Me' section
To hide the Contact Me box paste this into the 'About Me' section
This code hides both the 'About Me and 'Who I'd like to Meet' boxes - paste into the 'About Me' section
To hide 'Who I'd like to Meet' paste this into the END of the 'About Me' section
To hide your friend's listing paste this into the 'About Me' section
To hide the URL box (that shows the address of your MySpace page) paste this into the 'About Me' section
To hide the interests box paste this into the 'About Me' section
To hide the Friend's Comments paste this into the 'About Me' section
To hide the Details paste this into the 'About Me' section

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