Free MySpace Layouts -- Site Reviews

One of the great things about the social networking site, MySpace, is that it allows you to fully customize your profile by either entering your own HTML or using a pre-made layout. Pre-made layouts are available on literally hundreds of sites that cater to the MySpace generation with graphics, backgrounds, generators and codes. Layouts are a great way to give the bland, blue-and-white default page a little oomph, and they are conveniently broken down into categories like Emo, Girly, Sexy, Sporty, Cartoon, Super Model and Cute. The only downside to the plethora of sites that offer free MySpace layouts is that many of them also offer spy ware, malware and pop-ups galore. The sites I'll be reviewing here have all been tested by me personally and are guaranteed to ensure a safe, harmless visit--but make sure you've got pop-up blocker protection turned on, just in case.

Placing a pre-made MySpace layout on your page is easy. Every site that offers free layouts will provide you with a special HTML code, usually underneath the layout preview. Highlight this code with your mouse, then click CTRL+C to copy it. Then, log-in to your account and click the ‘Edit Profile' link that is located to the right of your profile picture. Find the ‘About Me' section and click CTRL+V to paste the layout code at the BOTTOM of any other text you may already have typed there. Click ‘Save All Changes' and you're done! Take a look at your profile afterwards to make sure it appears the way it's supposed to. If it doesn't, there may have been a problem with the code. Check to make sure you copied the entire code, then try pasting it again. Note: For more advanced users, to install a Flash or Div layout, please see the Div overlay layout tutorial video at the bottom of this page.

This site gets the first slot because it is my absolute favorite. In a world where so many of the pre-made layouts are obnoxious, over-sized and crudely-colored monstrosities, CreateBlog is a breath of fresh air. With names like ‘Capture the Moment' and ‘You Can't Destroy my Love', the layouts here are minimalist without being nonexistent. The photos are high-quality, evoking feelings of love, lust, betrayal and despair, and the colors all match perfectly. Although there's only 191 MySpace layouts to choose from, they are better and more professional than the 2000+ graphics overkill designs you see on other pages. Create Blog is also now allowing requests to be taken for special order layouts, scripts and other web services. Another cool feature is their stock photography section, where you can find great photos to use as background images for your own custom designed layouts. Pre-made banners and awesome vectors can also be found here.

MySpace layouts made by professional designers. Instead of HTML layouts, Love my Flash provides Flash templates that are highly customizable. Flash layouts appear on your page in an animated fashion, and certain links are also animated when you hover the mouse over top of them. Click on the preview for the layout you're interested in and you'll be brought to a page where you can customize the About Me, Interests and Who I'd Like to Meet sections, as well as hide or show music player, comments and friends. Preview how the page will look, then click ‘Get the Code' to copy and paste it onto your site. Love my Flash is pretty new; it's in it's beta version 1.0, so at the moment they only feature approximately 80 layouts. The layouts they offer, however, are extraordinarily pleasing. They're easy to look at because you don't have to scroll through most of the designs to see the whole thing, they look more like actual web pages than MySpace profiles, and the images load within seconds.

Whatever Life is another personal favorite of mine. Their homepage is a pretty good indication of the types of layouts they carry--funky, colorful and quirky. They have more layout categories than any other site, and they're all absolutely free. Some categories they have that other sites do not include Lyrics, Robot, Scene, Skyline, TV Shows, Decade Dedicated and No Image. But the thing that really gets me going is their DIV layouts. DIV layouts basically divide each element of a page into it's own high-level, high-quality section. It's a block of content that can be positioned anywhere on a site and can even overlap. It is important to follow the DIV layout instructions to the tee, as several codes often need to be placed in different text boxes on your profile, usually in ‘Heroes‘ and ‘Who I‘d Like to Meet‘. If you can figure it out, you'll have access to some of the most gorgeous, eye catching layouts out there. If you find yourself having trouble, check out the Div overlay layout tutorial video posted at the bottom of this page.

Cool Space Tricks has nearly 600 free layouts to choose from. Each layout has exclusive designs and graphics made available especially for the site. Their templates and classy and colorful, broken down into several categories that allow you to preview each layout individually. There's no over crowding or cluttering like you see on most free layout websites, just great photography and perfect organization. Cool Space Tricks also offers 40 categories of contact table images so your ‘Message' and ‘Add Me' links can be a little more attractive to visitors. Glitter graphics and animated text generators are another neat feature. The only downside to Cool Space Tricks is that they only show four layouts at a time, which means you'll have to click through at least 20 pages in each category in order to see all the different designs.

MySpace Master is one of the better free layout sites out there. It's own set-up is easy to read, easy to navigate and easy to look at. Don't use the toolbars on the left side to browse through the layouts because most of them link to other pages; use the MySpace Layouts Category section found in the middle. Although some of the categories (like Evil and Pattern) are a little overwhelming, there are others such as Clean, Quote and Emo that are tastefully done and aesthetically appealing. The Gothic section is another favorite because it doesn't have the type of designs you'd normally associate with the goth genre, like black-on-black and vampires galore; it has images from renowned English graffiti artist Banksy and "The Nightmare Before Christmas". They do offer a small Div layout section that's not really worth looking at (I recommend the Whatever Life site link shown above for that style.)

Unlike most sites that organize their layout themes into nine million different categories, Ultimate My Space has a few features that make layout customization a little easier. One such feature is the Top 25 Layouts section, which shows the layouts that have received the most page views over the course of the past few hours. Another is the Layout Snatcher, a box that allows you to enter the Friend ID where a MySpace page you envy is located. Click "Get Code" and the Snatcher will steal the layout code for you! And yet another great feature is the many tricks and codes they offer that can be cut-and-pasted to center your profile, resize comment images, or hide the details section. Make sure you check out the DIV Layouts area for amazing, authentic, colorfully simplistic designs.

The coolest part about Top Bun is their Children's Art layouts section, which has hand drawn pictures titled "Young Love" and "Mr. Sun", and the Grunge section, which features layouts called "Splat" and "Erosion". The downside to this site is that while the graphics are great and the colors easy on the eyes, all the layouts have the same design: content on the right, background image on the left. So don't go here if you're looking for variety. However, they do take personalized requests, so if you don't see something you want, just ask! My favorite thing on the site is their Food Flirtz comments graphics, cute little characters like a head of greens saying, "Lettuce get naughty" and a chocolate-dipped strawberry that says, "I want to fondue you."

A wide array of free layouts ranging from Celebrities, Models, Music and Movies and new layouts that are added every single day of the week has made Pyzam one of the best sites for nabbing a neat MySpace layout. Another great feature is that they also break their layout categories down by color so they're easy to find if you're looking for a particular scheme. The MySpace Stuff section has tons of codes you can use to add some fun elements to your profile. Flash Toys feature clock countdowns, post-it notes and fortune cookies, plus there's banners for your network section and rollover effects that can flip your pictures upside down, decorate them with hearts or turn them into black and white.