Adding a color-coordinated background

1Click on the profile button from the menu bar on top of the screen.

2Select the layout button from the profile menu bar that appears.

3You will see the screen that appears below.

4Either send us the image by clicking on "Choose File" on the left, or click on one of our background images to pick it (right) and load it into your background.

Note that the best images for backgrounds are slightly dark and limited in contrast. Vivid patterns and colors may make selecting a foreground color difficult, even for our automated systems.

If you don't like any of our backgrounds, you may be stuck for sources for pictures that are legal to use in your profile. We recommend the flickr.com advanced search, which lets you search for photos by a Creative Commons license. In English, this means it will find only images that have been donated by the photographer for use by the public, including you. Flickr.com advanced search, in a new window

5You will see the image as your background and preview the appearance of the color scheme we have automatically created for you. On the left side, you can click on a color to select it as your foreground.

6Once you have found an attractive foreground/background color and image selection, you can click on "Save this as your style" and your profile will be displayed with your new style. Don't like the way it looks? Don't worry, you can change it as much as you want.

7Here's part of my profile, to show the automatically generated color selection for this image. As you can see, it both looks good and is easy to read.

You can also use a "layout" from one of the many myspace layout sites on the web. While using our system will generally create more attractive results, there are many cool layouts on the web designed for myspace that you can use to spice up your amazing.com profile. To use one of them, perform steps 1 and 2 above and look at the rightmost column, "Layouts" from other sites.

Profile boxes Part 1: Changing your profile's arrangement

Profile boxes let you change and rearrange what's in your profile. If you want to see your pictures front and center, or your blog on the top, you can. This feature gives you a lot of power over how your profile looks, so let's start with the basics and move on.

This is the first part, on how to rearrange the contents of your profile to suit your needs. Part 2 lets you add more blocks, and part 3 shows you how to change their contents.

1Click on the profile button from the menu bar on top of the screen.

2Select the pick boxes button from the profile menu bar that appears.

3You will see a screen divided into two halves. On the left half is your current profile arrangement:

We're only going to work with this first half in this part of the tutorial. The next parts explain the rest of the screen.

4You can drag the boxes around to change their positions on your screen. Note that some of them, particularly the basics and contact boxes, are meant to be on the left because they are designed to be narrow. Most boxes, including friends, photos and so on, are designed to be on either side.

If you click on the "X" on the upper right corner of a box, that will mark it for removal when you save your arrangement. The "X" turns red when you have selected it. You can change your mind by clicking it again; it will return to gray.

5Once you have arranged the boxes to your satisfaction, press the Save Changes button below the boxes to save your changes and view your newly rearranged profile.

You should always view your profile after you have changed its arrangement, so you can see what it looks like. Often what seems like a great arrangement doesn't hold up when you view your profile. If that's the case for you, just click on Pick Boxes again and make your changes.

If you can only see one long column instead of two, make sure you maximize your browser so that your window is as wide as possible. Making changes only works well when you can see the two sides as in the screen shot.

Profile boxes Part 2: Adding boxes to your profile

The profile you receive when you first sign up is just a start. To add new information to the profile, you may want to add different boxes from what you're initially provided with.

Note that boxes do not magically add information to your profile. For example, if you add a photo album box, don't expect any photos to appear in it until you have uploaded some for us. It's best to start your use of amazing.com by making a few blog entries, uploading a few photos and then adding boxes to showcase your creations.

To start adding boxes to your profile, you go to the pick boxes section of your profile, just as you did before.

Previously, we highlighted your current profile arrangement on the left side of the screen. On the right, you will see a list of available boxes:

To add one of these boxes to your profile, simply drag it over to your arrangement, which we saw in our previous section. You can then save your new arrangement by clicking on "Save Changes" as before.

Here are the most common boxes and what they do. I have ordered this list in approximate order of how likely you are to want to use them.

As you can see, there's a profile box for just about anything, and you can arrange them in any order you like, providing tremendous flexibility. I hope you'll enjoy experimenting with them, and let us know if you have any questions or comments.

Profile boxes part 3: Editing boxes