In the MySpace Diaries Part Two, I attempted to customize my profile to no avail and added friends from my email contacts list. After sending my inquiry to MySpace about customizing a musician’s profile, I continued to dig through the site for an answer and found two things – first of all, there is an FAQ regarding MySpace Music profiles specifically, found in the left sidebar at http://www.myspace.com/aplaceformusic. While the FAQ here did not answer my question, it does have helpful answers to other questions that you may have.

The second thing I found were the MySpace forums! Oh, glorious forums, filled with information from other users who have time to help the confused. Therein I found my answer – with Profile 1.0 (the older version of MySpace Profiles, and currently the only version available for MySpace Music profiles), users can customize a profile with CSS by inserting code into the “about me” section of “edit profile.” Music profiles do not have an “about me” section, but HTML and CSS are currently accepted in any text field under “edit profile > musician details.” When experimenting, be sure to start by clicking the “safe mode” link on your “home” page so that if you accidentally screw anything up it’s easy to get back into the section and delete the code.

If you are adept at computer programming as well as music you can create your own CSS template, but if you are like me and barely understand HTML, simply search the web for “free myspace layouts” and you will find a plethora of choices for existing templates. You might also look for profiles that you like, and see where those templates came from (most free templates include some sort of identifying stamp).

Meanwhile, some people have been accepting my friend requests, which is great. Oddly, though, I have no idea who many of these people are! I realized a little too late that I have all sorts of obscure people in my email contacts from message board interactions or lists that I needed to “reply-all” to. At first I felt a bit guilty for not checking who I sent the invitations to, but then I realized that they must not mind too much if they accepted my friend request. I’ve also gotten some friend requests from other musicians networking, which I didn’t expect but is obviously awesome. Currently I have 35 friends on my classical profile and 7 on my Pomme de Terre profile (which serves me right since I haven’t been working on that one much).

Since most of my time on MySpace this week has been spent figuring out the answers to my profile customization crisis, I haven’t done much to pursue the making of new friends. I have some more ideas and suggestions, but you’ll just have to wait for the next post in the MySpace Diaries! In the meantime, I invite you to watch the mysteries unravel in real time by adding me at MySpace at http://myspace.com/candacebilyk and http://myspace.com/pommedeterremusique.