Gaia Online Fan

Gaia online layouts are customized looks for your profile. Creating of them is a very cool process and after you do one you will have unique <a href=”http://www.gaiaonlinefan.com/gaia-online-layouts/” title=”gaia layout”>gaia layout</a>. Here is a big tutorial to doing them:

Inspiration & ideas

Before you actually start creating anything its always good to have a certain idea of what you want with the profile you are gonna make. Ask yourself what
kind of a feeling or theme you are looking for. Anime, music, celebrity, art, sports, any movie…? Some people think this is the toughest part of the profile-making process.
Coming up with an uniquee idea to build your profile around isnt easy but if you find the right inspiration you cant start spinning on that. Try and figure out what
you find interesting or funny, something that you can show others as a reflection of what you are and whats close to your heart or feelings. A good advice
is to find one main thing to work from, having too many ideas pushed into one theme not only makes it look unpersonal but usually also cluttered and unorganised.

Making it personal

This is something important. As mentioned you do want the profile to reflect who you are and your interests. You need to focus on the things you like and want.
Looking at other peoples work may be inspirational but in the end you need to work out what suits you the best on your own. Getting advice from others can also be a
good thing, but dont let other peoples judgements run over what you decide to do in the end. Content as well as the graphical layout are both two ways of expressing
your real or Gaia personality.

Everywhere you are fed with colors, shapes, words, art, figures.. from the net, tv, conversations, people, images, clothes, music. All that makes you think and
imagine in a certain way which makes it very hard to actually come up with an completely original idea all by yourself. Impressions that creates creativity…
So no one should feel ashamed of browsing other peoples profiles or webdesign-sites to get ideas. Its a great way to open your mind for new things and
I think its inevitable to not get inspired by other people or other sources. The question is just to what amount and what you do with the ideas and inspirations you get.
There are things that you cant claim as completely yours and being open with how you work and do things is in my opinion best in the long run.
But its certain things thats disturbing - at least thats the impression Ive gotten from most people who encounter “copying”. Copying entire codes (not wrong
according to TOS but morally not defendable…), stealing images (just no no no), stealing a layout (perhaps more vague to detect but I think a creator of something
see it straight away, just on how things are set up and displayed), other details (this is really a greyzone - borders, shades of colors, fonts, individual positioning… hmm).
Taking bits and pieces here and there no one can say anything about that. Taking lots and lots of pieces - replicating.
I wise girl once said: there’s a difference between getting inspired and being overly inspired. Have this in the back of your mind when you look around for ideas,
no one likes copycats! Be creative on your own!

IMPORTANT - its always nice to credit anyone or anything that contributet in any way to your profile other than yourself!
Its not only polite towards those people its also very helpful for viewers of your profile.

Images

If you have a photo or an image you’re fond of its a nice start to start working out of that. Perhaps you have some old avatar-art laying around? If you want you can
always try and find a nice artist to make you some art. The Requests and Commissions is a good place to find artists on Gaia. You can pretty much find images all
over the internet but remember to credit where you got the image from. And if you find art that someone made its always nice to ask for permission to use it
beforehand. In case you are making a profile for someone else you always need to ask the original artist for permission to use images etc. There are plenty
of stockimages-sites and most can be found through google. On googles image-search you can also find most you are looking for. Dont forget that Gaia
is full of images that you can use, from the Gaia graphical sitelayout, that doesnt mean other peoples images though…

You dont need images or avy-art to create a wonderful profile though. Working with colors, boxes, patterns etc works equally good.

Colors

So now you may have some ideas and/or images you want to use in the theme. But you also need a colorscheme to go with it. I usually say that 2-3 colors are
the limit of how many colors you should use. If you add more colors than that you may risk it ending up blurry and messy. If you still decide to use a lot of colors,
which may look great, it need to really fit with the overall idea you have. Like if its a rainbowy-theme or if you have art included that works with colorfulness. However
sometimes if you have a strong and expressive art to focus the profile around making the rest of the graphics a bit more subtle works for the better.
If you have art you can usually pick up some of the colors from there. Some people find it hard to see what colors goes well together and clashing colors can often
burn peoples eyes and make the whole profile look unflattering. This and this site is good for you who wants to visualize the colorscheme before you start
working on the graphics. Want to find the right hex-code? Try this site. (Hex-code is a code that the browser will understand as a certain color. Some colors are more
‘websafe’ than others, meaning they will show up more correctly than others. example of hex-code: #ffffff is white and #000000 is black)

Sections

You need to decide what sections you want included and not. Having to exclude or include a certain section can both be a pain for some people. Myself I feel most
comfortable to have less sections showing in the profile. But others feel that almost every section is important to them. Try and think through what sections that
are important to you.

profile (avatar) - in some profiles the avatar just dont suit the overall theme. Perhaps the profile is not as Gaia-related as others are, then the avatar seems unnecessary.
Some people however love to match their avatar with the profile-theme or may have avatar-art included that goes with their avatarlook.

details - in case you dont want to publically show your Gaia details (last login, joined date etc) I suggest you dont include this section. Personally I like to
include half of the details (only the stats and not the info-part).

wishlist - showing your wishlist can be a good thing, esp when christmas or your birthday is coming up. A lot of the times people have no idea what to give you so
displaying a few of the things you want is nice. I put emphasize on a few since flooding your profile with items on your wishlist not only will make you look greedy
but also the profile look tacky.

about - this is the section I think is the most evident to include. The profile is a place for you to write something about yourself and show other people things of interest.
Sometimes I see people that has very little about themselves and that may be ok, but in some cases it just makes the profile look empty and soulless.

friends - personally I think that when including all of this section it requires a lot from the layout. Minimalistic profiles usually dont go well with this section.
But if you are one of those that think the friends on Gaia are one of the most important things - sure add the friends-section.

journal - perhaps you update your journal every day and you know many friends keep in contact with you that way - including the journal-section then comes natural.

multimedia - in case you find an interesting, funny, suitable multimedia for the profile you have in mind I think you should include this section. But if you just want
to add a multimedia just because you can - then dont. Sure having a multimedia play is cool but please dont add something that ruins the impression for the viewer.
Again - think about what fits your theme.

comments - another of the more useful sections. Letting the viewers have their reflections shown is a good thing. It makes the profile interactive and open.
Also its fun for you to see who visits the profile.

signature - this section can be tough to add. Perhaps you change your signature from time to time and the size of it may not be the same. Knowing how to
make room for the signature can therefor be hard. On top of it you may have links, text, avatar-art etc in there that looks odd together with the rest of the theme.

custom-sections - this is a pretty nifty way of adding additional things that you dont want to add in the about-section. I dont think I could ever make a profile
without my precious quilts- and recipesections. I also want my links-sections there not only for myself to quickly get to places but also to direct visitors.
But again, dont add a new section only because you know how to, it has to make sense for it to be there.

Some other parts of the profile you have to decide to include or not are:
equipped items, the speech-bubble, friends in common, avatars of the commenting people, status-buttons etc.

All in all you have to think if the sections you decide to include adds to the theme in a good way or if it just feels unnecessary. Dont add more than necessary, dont add
more than you are planning on using in one way or another.

Content

With content I pretty much mean what you add in the profiles about-section. The content is what your profile is about, perhaps you want to show some favourite art
you have or talk about your pets or favourite band. You spice up your profile with almost anything that the viewer can read and look at. Dont think that a spiffy layout
with complicated graphics is all that viewers see when they visit profiles. People wants to read, dig through, find links to other cool places, share things, experience,
get to know, learn… There are really no limits to what you can do to your profile as long as you follow the general Gaia rules of course.

When you have come this far you have thought up the most basic stuff, perhaps written a few things down. Now you need to move on to making the actual graphics.

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