Customising your Space.
Because your Space is exactly that, your page, you have complete control over its appearance, its layout and also which modules appear there. Modules contain any content that you wish to include in your Space such as your Profile, photos, a blog, a list, all of these are contained in separate modules. So let’s begin to fully customise our Space shall we?
1. Go to your Space by clicking on the More tab in your Home page, and then selecting Spaces from the drop down list. At the moment our default Spaces page is rather drab and boring. It already contains a title module, (Newbie’s Space in my case) a profile module, a blog module, a photos module and a Network module. These are the default modules. At the top just underneath the Search box you will see Customize. Click on this.
2. From the drop down list, click on Change the theme. A drop down window will then appear. This is divided into several different sets of themes to choose from. Featured themes, Simple Themes, Animals, Art, Characters and so on. I find that the best way of finding a particular theme that you like is simply to work your way through them all one by one. As you click on each of the small windows for each theme, your Spaces page will change accordingly so you can easily see what your theme will look like. For now I am going to choose the ‘snow’ theme from the Nature set.
3. Click on Close tab. NOTE. As you cycle through all of the available themes, you will probably notice that some themes are ‘transparent’ and show a picture underneath. This can be altered later as it often makes any text placed on your Space inside a blog for example,very hard for your visitors to read. The yellow Customize band across the top of your Spaces page will remain there so that you can continue to alter your Space.
4. Now from the yellow Customize area, click on Layout. Choosing exactly which layout to use for your Space largely depends on what you intend to use it for. If you don’t wish to include any modules apart from a title and a blog for example, then the first layout might suit you better. Each of the layouts tend to include the title area, some have a left or right narrower area where you could place your other modules such as your profile, Network, guestbook etc, leaving the main larger area as your blog area or for your photos. The very last layout has no ‘main’ larger area, and would suit someone who just wanted to include lot’s of modules in their Space. TIP. Again, the secret here is to try them all out to see how they look, and remember that you can always return here later and choose a different layout if you decide the one that you choose at this time is not suitable. I am going to choose the middle one, two columns with the narrow column to the right hand side.
5. When you are happy with your chosen layout click Close tab.
6. Now click on Modules in the yellow Customize area. You will be shown a drop down list containing lot’s of different modules that you can add (or hide) on your Spaces page. These are listed under different headers, Featured modules, Social, Photos, music and video, Blog, Lists, Gadgets, Xbox Live, Other and Space tools. As you can see, some are already enabled by default. For this how-to, I am going to add Categories from the blog area and Blog list from the List area.
7. To add any of the modules to your Space, just click on Show. When you have finished adding modules click on Close tab.
8. The additional modules have all been added above my main area and I don’t want them placed there. I want those added modules to be in the narrower column at the side leaving my blog area in the main larger column. You may also wish to alter the position of your modules as they have been placed . So let’s rearrange those modules shall we?
9. Click on Customize once more , and then select Rearrange or hide modules from the drop down list. If you haven’t already done so, you will be prompted to firstly SAVE all of your changes made so far before being allowed to alter the position of your chosen modules so click on Save in the yellow Customize area and then select rearrange or hide modules from the Customize list.
10. Move your cursor to the top of the module that you wish to move. A small icon with four arrows will appear indicating that you can now move this module. In order to do so, hold down your left mouse button and then drag the module over to the area where you wish to place it and then just drop it into place by letting go of the left button on your mouse.
11. When you have completed moving all of your modules to where you would like them to be, click on Save.
12. Now let’s alter our chosen theme. In order to do this, we need to click on the Advanced tab in the Customize area. Another tab window will open and this contains a list of different areas that you can change in your chosen theme. It contains the following, Text colours and fonts (including size) Background colours, Background image and Module colours and fonts. NOTE. If you make a mess of it, you can always choose to Clear all changes and use the default settings at the bottom of this window.
Text colours and fonts
13. For my particular theme, the text colour is a blue and any link text is in white. I’m going to change this.
14. Firstly click on the multicoloured square on the right opposite Text and choose a different colour. I have chosen black.
15. Next do the same for the Link text by clicking on the multicoloured text box and then choosing a different colour from the More Colours box. I have chosen a dark blue for my links. You can see how your changes will look as you make them. Now for the font.
16. Click on the small black down arrow to the right of the Font box. Work your way through the offered fonts to see which one looks better. I am going to choose Tahoma. Now let’s change its size.
17. Again, click on the small black down arrow to the right of Size and then cycle through all the different sizes until you are happy. You can also choose to make your text Bold or Italic by clicking in the appropriate box next to Style.
Background colours.
This area allows you to alter the colours used in the Page, the body of your Space, any selected areas and also the colour for hover. You may wish to leave this area for now as it can be awkward to see just how your changes affect the look of your Space.
Background Image.
Lot’s of themes use a background image behind your chosen modules, and this area allows you to use the default theme images, hide them all or alternatively use your own image for the background. If you wish to use your own image then click on Browse in order to access the pictures on your computer where you can then choose an image or photograph to use as your background. I am choosing to Hide all background images.
You can also choose the placement and alignment of your chosen image, whether or not to repeat it and also the transparency of your modules. NOTE. Too much transparency can make your blog very hard to read for your visitors.
Module Colours and fonts.
Here you can change the colour of the top of each module, its background colour, the text colour used in the header of each module and also the colour of the module border. Try each one out to see how it looks.
18. As before, click on the multicoloured box to access more colours to try out. You can easily revert back to the default colours by clicking on the box to the left to return to your chosen themes default colours.
19. Below the colour choices you can choose whether or not to have a border style for all of your modules, and also change the font used for module titles (such as blog, Photos etc) including its size and whether or not to make it italic. Try each different one out. You can see all of the changes as you make them.
20. When you are completely happy with all the changes that you have applied, click on Save inside the Customize area.
Your Title.
The only area left to customize is your title module.
21. Click on Edit just above the title of your Space. Another tab window will drop down where you can alter the name of your Space, change the font used, its size, colour, style, whereabouts the title appears i.e left, right or centre, and also give your title a Tagline. As you make changes you can view them in a handy Preview window at the bottom.
22. Type a new title into the text box if you wish to change it.
23. Choose a different font from the list provided by clicking on the small black down arrow. See how it looks as you change each font in the handy Preview window below.
24. Change the size of the font used and decide if you want it to be Bold, Italic or Underlined. Change its colour by selecting one of the boxes by clicking on it, or by clicking on the multicoloured box to the right in order to select more colours.
25. Decide just where the title should be placed in the title module. I am going to choose the centre.
Tagline setting.
26. You don’t have to use a tagline, but it can be a fantastic way to give any additional info about either yourself or what to expect to see on your space for your visitors and as before you can enter you chosen text, the font used, the size and style,its colour and its alignment inside the title module.
27. Once you are quite happy with your chosen title and tagline, just click on Save. Of course you can add more modules in the future or return the theme back to it’s default settings or even choose an entirely different theme or layout whenever you wish. So now just enjoy using your new Space!
Here’s mine now that I have completed customizing it.
TG
