Create a Custom Header

A quick, easy way to make your social network stand out and look terrific is to design a custom header. Custom headers are an essential element to your social network’s brand, as they appear on every single page.

Making a custom header is simple. All you need to do is find a photo of your choice, crop it and upload to your social network.

Choosing a Theme

As a Network Creator you know what your social network is all about. Try to think of a color pallete or design that you can use as the background and body color for your social network. Then, choose from more than 50 professionally designed themes by going to the Manage page and clicking the “Appearance” link. If you’re planning on adding a header, a basic theme without many graphics is a good place to start.

In this case, we’ve chosen to start with “Light Slate.” The grays and whites of the theme are simple and clean, and easy to build upon.

Adding a Header Background

The next step in creating a custom header is actually selecting the image you’d like to use as the header background. For simple headers, you’ll want an image that you can run words over and still read. Images with solid areas of white, blue, black or, really, any color in the top left work best.

You’ll need to crop the image to fit your header background area. The width of your social network’s header area is 955 pixels, so use a program like Gimp (free for Windows), Seashore (free for Mac), Photoshop or even a free Web site like Web Resizer to crop or resize the image’s width to 955 pixels. We recommend a height between 100 and 175 pixels.

Use an image that encompasses the theme of your social network in one glance. Remember, a picture says a thousand words — you should definitely make this one count. For a neighborhood-based social network, we used a picture of the local area:

Once you’ve saved your image on your computer, you’re ready to add it to your social network! To do that:

1. Click on the Manage tab
2. Head to the Appearance page
3. Select the “All Options” tabs, below the theme thumbnails
4. Click on the camera icon next to the “Header Image” text.
5. Upload your header image, and click “Done.”
6. Click “Save” at the bottom of the page.

Here’s what my header looks like now:

Here are other examples of great custom headers on Ning:

For additional customizations, try removing your social network’s name and tagline.

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