How do you change the appearance of your webpage?

[Aijung Kim]

hey, sorry this is more of a technical question. i noticed some people have cool customized pages where they use their own artwork and stuff for the background. how do you do that? i saw the place where you can select a "theme" but i couldn't figure out how to totally customize it.

also why does there seem to be two different We Make Zines pages? when i click on my name at the top, it leads me to a different place where the background is white. but when i click on "my page" it leads to something different?

sorry if these questions are dumb and maybe obvious. i just couldn't figure them out.

[Aijung Kim]

hi guys, thanks for your replies. i actually did go to the appearance page before but i checked again and realized there are a lot more themes to choose from than i thought before - i never noticed the little arrow buttons at the top right that let you see more pages of options.

but actually i meant what sarah said - "I sometimes see people with themes that I never see as an option." i noticed a few people with their own photos at the top, like Jenny the Artist has pictures of dolls at the top of her page, and i know that's not an option!

i guess i should just contact individual people and ask how they did it. i'll post when i find out.

thanks!

[Aijung Kim]

duh, i figured it out. go to "All Options" and it lets you upload photos. although i think the descriptions are rather confusing, as "Header" is actually the side colors, and some of them i can't even understand what they are referencing. also, i had trouble uploading some photos, and every time i tried to upload a photo for Network Logo, it didn't seem to do anything. i couldn't figure out how to get a picture on the top part of the page. and then after i kept changing the appearance, it wouldn't let me save my options anymore. maybe too many people on the Ning network? i don't know. it's still slightly confusing to me. hopefully i'll be able to tweak it more once it lets me save my page!

[Rick Bradford]

Anybody know how to replace/cover up the "We Make Zines" text? I've seen it done here and it looked nice but I can't figure it out. I can change the colors but it still lays on top of whatever other header image I upload...

[Rick Bradford]

I'm having the same trouble with uploading a "network logo". It doesn't take. It would be reasonable if we weren't allowed to remove the network's logo/title but the option appears to be there and I've seen somebody else here who's done it.

Somebody needs to spill the beans!

[Aijung Kim]

i don't know. after having twiddled with my page a hundred times, it now won't let me save any new changes i want to make. i'll click on the "Save" button and it doesn't do anything. I think this site just has glitches or something. i noticed when i uploaded images in certain sections, sometimes they'd appear and sometimes they wouldn't. so i guess it depends on how "friendly" the network is being at the time.

[Rick Bradford]

You may have tried this and it's just a stab in the dark but maybe see if clearing your browser's cache helps. Sometimes the browser pulls from the cache so it won't show newly-made changes even if they actually took. It didn't fix it for me but might be worth a try...

[Aijung Kim]

my cache clears automatically, so that can't be it. i should probably e-mail someone about the problem, but i guess i don't mind not changing my page for awhile. did you figure out your page?

[Rick Bradford]

I haven't actually gotten back to it. Sometimes if I can't figure something out reasonably quickly it gets pushed back by everything else I'm trying to figure out reasonably quickly...

[Monstress Zine]

if you guys ever figure it out, i'd like to know how to put up a fancy banner at my page. i haven't figured it out myself.

[Aijung Kim]

OH MY GOD!!! i finally figured out some stuff, and i'm not even a "computer person." so i'm pretty excited about this. here are some secret tips:

***to upload a banner on your page and erase the "We Make Zines" logo:
go to My Page --> Appearance --> All Options. Upload your banner onto "Header". you'll have to twiddle with it to figure out the right dimensions so your banner doesn't get cut off. BUT make sure you have no image uploaded on "Network name," and that your Header color is white. if you have a color entered into there, the picture won't appear. then go to the Text section and click on Network Name. if there is an option for transparent, click on that. Otherwise, type in the word "Transparent" and it will clear your text, making it disappear. so if you want any customized text, make sure it's on the banner picture that you uploaded.

Basically, i think the trick is to make sure that if you are uploading a picture, make sure you have not selected a color on that same category, otherwise your picture won't upload.

hope this helps you guys.

[Rick Bradford]

Good work!

[Monstress Zine]

yeah, thanks so much!