I’ve had many requests to update my fairly popular Facebook Mimic theme for MySpace. I finally promised myself that I’d do a complete revamp of the theme once I hit 2,000 downloads. Well, that time is now.

Download:

Before downloading, you should know that this theme is a div overlay theme, and it requires a little labor to work properly (a file named “readme.txt” is included to guide you). Also, do not send support questions to me via MySpace.

• Download Theme (6658)
• Demo
• Support forums

A brief history of Facebook Mimic:

• February 25, 2007:
  I posted the original theme to an almost nonexistent audience. The theme wasn’t wildly popular at the time, and my attempts to raise it up the Digg and Reddit ladders were unsatisfactory.
• June 6, 2007:
  Social networking news site, Mashable, posts a huge article, Best MySpace Layouts That Don’t Look Like MySpace At All, naming the Facebook theme in the second spot on their list. The theme seemed to come back to life. Download numbers soared.
• September 13, 2007:
  A link back from Michael Arrington of Techcrunch in his article, MySpace Getting A Little Less Chaotic?, pushes download numbers higher up the scale.
• Since then:
  Many requests to update the theme to match Facebook’s newer design.
• November 21, 2007:
  The theme gets its 2,000th download.
• Today:
  Updated, revamped, and revitalized version of the Facebook theme for MySpace.

Thoughts about the theme:

This is in no way a finished product. I’m just ready to put it out there, get some bug reports, and continuously update the theme over time. I’ve, honestly, got more important things to do than worry with MySpace themes. I’m a WordPress theme-developer, of course.

Nevertheless, I have put quite a bit of time into this project and would like your feedback. What other options would you want to see? I’m thinking of integrating some other features (if possible) that Facebook has to give it more of a Facebook feel. However, I wanted to leave most of the page elements up to the user because it’s his/her profile.

Internet Explorer has been kicking my ass over the last few days. Even though the browser sometimes causes problems, the real problem is MySpace’s age. They seriously need to think of a revamp themselves.

This version of the template is much less image-reliant. The theme also uses a div overlay as opposed to the twisting, turning, and positioning of MySpace’s tables, circa 1995. Using the theme requires more work on the user’s end, but I assume the people that want a clean layout, probably know a little more about XHTML and CSS anyway.

Tell me what you think about the new Facebook theme for MySpace. I’m interested in your thoughts. Any features you want in future updates? Please report all bugs here.

One other note: I might continue with the development of the original Facebook theme, so that users that don’t want to put in the time, can have another option.

Get the new version (2.0):

• Get version 2.0 here. (Also, ask all support questions about version 2.0 at that post).

Version 1.2.1

• Fixed the text-alignment problem that arose for some reason.

Version 1.2

• Fixed the background color. It is now white again.
• Fixed the hover issue on the contact table. There’s no longer that ugly blue background when you hover over the links.

I’ve been working on this idea in my head for some time. I wasn’t really sure how I was going to make my MySpace profile look like Facebook. However, I did remember reading Mike Davidson’s Hacking A More Tasteful MySpace a while back. So, I snatched that code to work with.

So, now we’re going to make our MySpace profiles look like our Facebook profiles. Why would anyone want to do that? Because Facebook just looks a lot more user-friendly. And, it is more user-friendly. Even though there’s little we can do to make the MySpace interface work better, we can make it look better. Since I’m so happy with Facebook’s service, I’ve decided to dedicate this theme to them.

I won’t bother going through an entire tutorial on how to tweak this thing. You can find that at Hacking A More Tasteful MySpace. I would simply be saying the same thing Mike said.

I’ve obviously made a few adjustments to line things up a little differently, and I’ve put together some new images for the theme. I’m still tweaking the layout to work better with Firefox. However, if you fix it before I do, then I would appreciate it if you send the code to me (I’m sure there’ll be a link back if you do).

Feel free to modify the layout and images in any way you want. Just “unzip” the contents of the file onto your computer. Tweak the included “.psd” files in Photoshop. Upload the images to your webserver. Then, chage the image file paths in the included “facebook-mimic.css” file, and put it in the “About Me” section under “Edit Profile” in your MySpace control panel.

If you have any questions or suggestions, leave them here, and I’ll try to get back to you or implement them as quickly as I can.

If you just want to trash me for making my profile look like Facebook, then feel free to do that here also.

• Facebook theme for MySpace version 2.0
• See it in action
• Mike Davidson’s Hacking A More Tasteful MySpace