Yesterday we got a reminder from MySpace that we could upgrade our artist profile to the new 3.0 version, so we did. Since we didn’t really have a MySpace design, we didn’t have much to lose, and the upgrade was relatively painless.
The new profile editor lets you choose modules for your site, which you can drag and drop to their preferred positions. All the html in the old profile got dumped to the new html box, and it took some time to figure out that it needs to be edited there, and not in the bio section. This was the only issue to be solved after the upgrade, and we’re happy with the new cleaner layout of profile 3.0. The new marquee header lets visitors see the latest status update immediately, and the video slider is a great tool to present your videos if you have 10 of them, like us. However, if your band has a MySpace design based on custom css, you’ll have a hard time keeping your layout after the upgrade, since profile 3.0 doesn’t support css customization.
While custom CSS gave more freedom to users to completely re-design their profiles, it also made MySpace look messy and cluttered compared to Facebook, and it happened too often that fancy profile tweaks were too much to handle for the browser, so the decision makes sense. The only customization left in profile 3.0 is choosing a custom background image, so if you spent a lot of time on designing your unique MySpace profile with plenty of css tweaks, you’re in trouble now. Until 3.0 is in beta, upgrade remains optional, but soon all users will be forced to migrate to the new version.
This is exactly what we were talking about in our previous MySpace post. If all the efforts you put in your MySpace profile had been spent on your own website, you wouldn’t have to worry about losing it all now. If you’ve learned your lesson, you won’t waste too much time on trying to transfer that fancy design to 3.0, or even creating a new one. Just choose one of their pre-set styles, they are fine.
While a lot of MySpace users will miss custom css (there’s even a Facebook protest group), we don’t think this change is bad at all. But it’s coming too late, and it’s more likely to accelerate the exodus of MySpace users than to stop it.