How to use DIV tags in MySpace layouts
Does your MySpace profile emanate such a stink that your eyes begin to water every time you look at it?
You may due for a change and your ticket out of the most-hideous-web-design contest could be doing a search for ‘myspace div layouts’ or ‘myspace overlays’. Now before your techie-talk alert meter goes jumping into the red and you run away from your computer screaming a string of profanities, let me explain.
First of all, for those of you who have been living in the outer reaches of the galaxy for the past two years, let me get you up to speed on what’s been happening down here on planet earth…
MySpace is a social networking website which allows you to quickly and easily create a free and personal web page. These web pages –which are hosted at MySpace.com– are called MySpace profiles. MySpace layouts –which are widely available all over the internet– are little snippets of HTML/CSS code (mostly CSS) which you can use to instantly customize your profile.
Now, a MySpace DIV layout (a.k.a., MySpace overlay) is just like MySpace layout in that you copy-and-paste it into a box on your ‘Edit Profile’ screen in order to modify your profile’s background image, background colors, fonts and what have you. What differs is how a DIV layout modifies your profile. Typically, MySpace layouts will allow all your default MySpace modules (e.g., your basic info box, contact table, interests box, top friends space, comments section, etc) to show through. MySpace DIV layouts, on the other hand, will hide the default modules on your profile and put a completely different arrangement of columns and data on top.
Traditionally, MySpace DIV layouts hid all your default MySpace modules and then layed a new web design over top (hence ‘overlay’). Some of the more complex overlays required you to write up your own HTML coding in order to rebuild your top friends list from scratch (which is usually several atmospheres above the typical MySpace user’s web design capabilities).
Nowadays, since MySpace has implemented many new CSS classes into the default MySpace template, greater control can be applied to each individual MySpace module. Hence it is now a lot easier to pick and choose which modules to hide or display on your profile using CSS coding.
Hence, a new wave of MySpace DIV layouts are starting to appear where your top friends and/or your friends comments sections are allowed to show through while all other modules on your profile are hidden and replaced with new specially designed sections and columns. This allows for the best of both worlds where the MySpace.com Cold Fusion scripting is permitted to handle the insertion of new friends and comments into the appropriate sections on your profile while the DIV layout CSS code handles all the rest. A good DIV layout will actually make your MySpace profile look like a ‘real’ web page (*chuckle*) with a header banner, a professional-looking vertical menu running down the left side and a content area in the center.
As for the installation of DIV layouts, they do require a little more than just a quick copy-and-paste. Since DIV layouts handle the insertion of all the links that lets other MySpace users message you or add you as a friend or load your pics or blog page, you’ll need a special code which will make all those links work properly. This code is called your ‘friend ID’ and is easily obtained by clicking on the ‘view profile’ link on your MySpace account home page. Once on your profile, you have only to look in the web address box at the top of your web browser and then select and copy all the numbers appearing after ‘friendid=’. This is the so-called friend ID numbered code that you’ll use to create your DIV layout (usually via a DIV layout generator at a MySpace resource site).
And that’s pretty much everything you need to know about this new genre of web designs for MySpace pages. So if you’re tired of using a layout on your profile that looks like it was created by a nose-picking, hyperactive six-year-old, you may want to think about delving into the world of MySpace DIV layouts. It could be just the thing you need to add a touch of class to your little corner of the social networking scene.
Robert Darrell is the chief cook and bottle washer of RobThunder.com where he provides a collection of exceptional MySpace DIV layouts that are very easy to install. These layouts are professional multi-column table less web designs using 100% original background images and cross-browser compatible CSS coding.
Robert has made hundreds of MySpace layouts over the past two years. He also has a collection of traditional MySpace layouts, that are high-quality, free and easy-to-use.