1) The Power of Paragraphs

Since most MySpace users know very little about web design, what you'll often see on a MySpace page is an 'About Me' section filled up with a huge unbroken block of text. No matter how captivating the writing is, most will tire of reading this after the first four or five lines and especially so if it continues on for another 20 or 30 lines. You'll want to avoid making the same mistake of overwhelming your readers by putting your text into nice bite-size paragraphs.

Unfortunately for non-geeks, when you create paragraphs by hitting the Return key twice while typing into any text box on your MySpace 'Edit Profile' screen, this will not result in paragraphs created on your MySpace page after you hit the 'Save All Changes' button and you view your profile page. To properly format your text into paragraphs on your MySpace page, you'll need to type in:

...every time you wish to start a new paragraph. Then when you click on the 'Save All Changes' button and view your profile, you'll see your text formatted into paragraphs. That's it. That's all. Angle bracket, p, angle bracket. Three little characters can mean the difference between someone reading everything you have to say or only reading the first few lines.

2) Legible Text

Many MySpace pages are styled using MySpace layouts which often use a background image to enhance the display. But all too frequently, MySpace users fail to think through to the final result of someone actually attempting to read certain colors and shades of text displayed over certain background images. The result is quite often a text color that doesn't have enough contrast with the color of the background image in order to make the text legible.

What you'll want to do to create a truly professional and classy MySpace page is to carefully select a layout in which the text is clearly legible. This means you'll need a light colored text displayed on a mostly dark colored background image or vice versa. And this also means that high contrast background images that have a myriad of light and dark colors will make poor backgrounds no matter what as there will always be some part of the background that will make any text color difficult to read.

3) A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

You can spice up your MySpace profile page by posting images directly on it instead of just using your pics page. To do this simply upload your image(s) to a free image host like ImageShack or Photobucket, get the image URL (web address of the image) and then insert the following code in any text box on your 'Edit Profile' screen:

Simply replace URL_TO_IMAGE_GOES_HERE with the web address of your uploaded image.

Presto. Pictures on your MySpace profile.

4) Keep It Inside the Box

Another unfortunate hallmark of MySpace pages is a layout that is so wide that it creates horizontal scrollbars at the bottom of the user's web browser. This is considered a faux pas in professional web design as it forces the user to not only scroll up and down but back and forth as well in order to view the entire web page. To avoid 'spreading your layout' in this fashion you'll need to take care of two things:

a. Don't post images wider than 400 pixels in any section of your MySpace page.

b. Don't allow friends to post any images wider than 400 pixels to your Comments section

To handle the second of the above, you'll need to either delete any comments with images that are too wide or you can disable HTML in your Comments section altogether (which will not allow the posting of images to your Comments section at all). To disable HTML in your Comments section, simply go to your MySpace account home page, click on Account Settings >> Profile Settings and then click to clear 'Disable HTML Profile Comments'.

5) Apply the KISS Principle

And finally, apply the KISS principle, i.e., Keep It Simple Stupid. It's a shame that in some respects, MySpace has become a gigantic online club of abominable web designers (and is subject to great ridicule because of this). Just because you see other MySpace users load upwards of a dozen flash videos and 100 image files all on one page (and this is not an exaggeration) does not make this good web design. The best web pages on the net are not those that are stuffed to the gills with the most bells and whistles but rather those that are user-friendly, color-coordinated and efficient at getting their particular message across. If you want a truly classy MySpace layout then keep in mind that sometimes less is more.