Surviving myspace’s profile changes
Nick
| 8/12/2010 12:40
You worked your guts out for days to get your myspace profile looking schmick and then just as you were putting your feet up and feeling good about yourself they moved the goal posts. Now it looks like it’s 1992 and everyone is using Netspace 1.0 (sorry - geek joke there).
Here are my top tips for fixing the mess stat and going back to sipping G and T’s whilst planning your next world tour.
I’m assuming that you already had a kick-arse profile with a background image and a banner image at the top of the profile. I’m also assuming you know basic HTML (which you must have to get your old profile working!).
1. It’s nowhere near as bad as it looks
Whereas the old profile system took days to get working and involved mucking round with lots of code, the new system is better and you can get a great result in a few hours by keeping things simple.
2. Decide what you want to drive visitors to do
What do you want people to do after they come to your myspace page? Do you want them to:
- Visit your website
- Join your mailing list
- Click through to iTunes and buy your album
- Listen to your music
- Like your Facebook fan page
- Email you or your agent for a booking
The answer will probably be more than 1 thing, but shouldn’t be more than 5 or 10 things. List these things in order of priority. You’ll need strategy for each of these things, but we’ll come back to that later.
3. Look at some other profiles for inspiration
Go to www.myspace.com/music/artisthq/category/Profile Of The Day and have a look at how other people have set up their profiles. Try and find some bands in your genre that you like. While you’re at it check out my band at www.myspace.com/dearorphans.
4. Delete any module that doesn’t contribute to the goals you’ve just listed
Get rid of all the clutter so only what you need is on the page. Immediate candidates for deletion include:
- Status and Mood
- Badges
- Groups
- Music
- Photos
- Video Player
- Video Slider
- Videos
If in doubt delete - it’s easy to add them back in later. You don’t need the Photos or Videos module on your profile page because they can be accessed from the navigation on the left anyway.
The HTML Box module is your friend and you can use multiple instances of this module to add custom content to the profile. More about this later!
5. Set the layout and drag the modules around according to priority
Under the Change Layout section of the profile editor, choose your preferred layout. I recommend the 2-column layout with the footer that spans both the columns. This footer area is great for the Friends and Comments modules.
Click the Collapse Modules link so that all the modules display as a short bar. Drag the modules around to re-order them based on priority. That is, the module that meets your most important goal goes at the top of the middle column. The one that meets your second most important goal goes beneath this. Modules that are of low priority can go in the right hand column. Place the Friends module at the top of the footer and the Comments module below it (this will make it looks similar to the old profile).
Remember that you’ll use the HTML Box module to add custom content related to your specific goals. You can drop instances of this module in now and drag them into place ready for their content later.
6. Create a background and set your colour scheme
Whereas your old background was designed for a profile 820 pixels wide, the new profiles are 960 pixels wide. Edit your old background to make is work for the new profile width. Myspace will take a background image up to 1600 x 1600 pixels wide. Use the Build Your Own Theme > Background section of the profile editor to add your background and align it correctly.
Use the Build Your Own Theme > Colors section to set colours based on your background and banner images.
7. Create and add the banner image
Take your old banner image and re-purpose it for the new profile. The width has increased to 960 pixels, but the height has been reduced to 250 pixels. You are able to specify a height greater than 250 pixels, but this extra content is hidden on page load. The user must click a “show more” link to display it (this is ideal for having some extra content such as your latest video clip - see www.myspace.com/keithurban for a good example of this).
The banner is now called the Marquee and you turn it on and off in the profile editor under Change Layout > Add a Marquee.
The marquee uses HTML so you can add links to your website, facebook profile, iTunes, etc.
8. Add custom content to HTML boxes
The final step is to go add your custom content into the HTML Boxes you created earlier. You can take your old content and drop it in these to display whatever content you want.
9. Make that G + T and plan next world tour
Reward yourself for a job well done. Look forward to things being a lot easier for you the next time you have to update your profile.
If you’ve got any questions or want to engage Lyn Taylor Photography to brand your profile for you then please get in touch using the Contact Us page.
November 12th, 2010
Lyn Taylor
| 12/11/2010 17:07
Kazzy Waters
