How To Create A Custom Twitter Background
Posted by Mert Erkal on Dec 10, 2008 in Microblogging | 99 comments
You can make a real good impression with a Custom Twitter Background. In this post I will show you how to customize your Twitter background in 10 minutes. Spend a few minutes, and create your own Twitter background. Don’t miss this great marketing opportunity.
Have You Tried Before?
I bet you already tried to have your own customized Twitter background, but you could not locate the images and the text perfectly well on the screen, and the outcome was not satisfactory. No worries, I also failed a few times, and then come up with a good solution. Have you seen my Twitter profile? I located my blog’s logo on the left side, and my blog’s URL, my photo, and a quote from me on the right side of my Twitter background. Since then I noticed that I have 5 new followers every single day, even though I don’t update my Twitter so often.
I am sure you see the real potential now, let’s start with the measurements.
The Twitter Background Measurements
First of all, I must tell you that my suggestions are based on my laptop’s 1280 x 720 monitor screen. Please note that the width between the left browser edge and the left edge of the white Twitter posts area is around 245 pixels. On the other hand, the width between the right browser edge and the right edge of the white Twitter posting area is 250 pixels. So when creating the design of your new background, you should leave five pixels dead space on both sides of the white Twitter posting area.
These are the general standard measures accepted by majority of Twitter background designers:
Image width: 1255 pixels
Image height: 555 pixels
Left graphic width: 245 pixels
Right graphic width: 250 pixels
I guess you realize what we are going to do in the design process. We will create an image in 1255 x 555, and leave spaces for custom design on both sides. Let’s proceed to the design process.
Custom Twitter Background Design
I assume you are a blogger who is willing to build a personal brand via Twitter. Therefore your custom Twitter background should represent your logo, your photo, your blog’s URL, and your slogan. Well, we know the key ingredients, let’s start the design.
Photoshop, Fireworks, or Paint, it does not matter. All you need to do is to create a new graphic that is 1255 x 555. This is going to be the background image for your Twitter profile. You need to leave Twitter post area empty. If you know how to use a guide, then create a vertical guide at 450 pixels and another vertical guide at 1005 pixels. The space between these two represent the Twitter post area.
If you don’t know how to use a guide, just draw two imaginary vertical guides and leave the are between them blank.You need to locate your blog’s URL, your photo, your logo, and your slogan out of this zone so that it will not clash with the Twitter post area. You may try a few times for the best result, so you should be patient.
Done? Now save your graphic as either a GIF or JPG file. Make sure that the file size is less than 800K. This is the maximum size allowed by Twitter for a background image.
How To Upload Your New Twitter Background Image
- Login to your Twitter account.
- Click on Settings in the menu at the top.
- You will now see a Picture Here tab.
- Click on the one marked Design.
- Scroll down to the bottom and click on the Change Background Image>> link.
- You will see a text field with a Browse button next to it.
- Click on that button so that you can search and upload your new Twitter background image.
- Once you finish, make sure the Tile Background check box is empty. Otherwise your new image will repeat on the screen.
- Click on the Save Changes button at the bottom, and you are done!
Please try this, and share your new customized Twitter background by leaving a comment to this post. When used correctly, Twitter can help you significantly increase your brand. You may also learn how you can attract a targeted Twitter followers that will not only hang around, but listen to what you have to say with Twitter Rockstar.
If you need professional looking Twitter background, I strongly suggest you to try TwitrBackgrounds.com.
Stay tuned, and follow my Twitter for more tips on Twitter.
Thanks for this. Very useful and appreciated
great tips, i´ll try it tday
thanks
I Found It Useful… Thankx…!!!
Very helpful resource and well written, I'm off to make one now for our company http://www.fotoviva.co.uk
Keep up the good work!
I thank you for your article.
I followed these leeds and found, that you don't actually have to pay to get cool Twitter backgrounds. I found many web pages, which also offer cool and interesting design for Twitter and you can get them for free.
I hope that this will help you and the readers of this blog. Thank you again and I encourage you to write even more articles like this. They inspire a lot!
Here is the link to article an article, which I wrote
great tut,learnt some new stuff
worked great. i just gotta get my photo with a better resolution, but that's my deal. go and check it out if you'd like http://www.twitter.com/naomynaomy
looks perfect naomy! happy new year!
check it out
https://twitter.com/sonilagarwal
all thanks to u
Awesome post, you provided a helpful information dear , l will try to create my own Twitter background
http://twitter.com/Cricket_God
Hi Mert, thanks for this helpful article.
Thanks mate this is a great post, we have just editied our company tiwtter page using this – nice one !
Thanks so much. This is a great topic. I've been waiting to create my own Twitter background but didn't know how. I've seen some really cool backgrounds that are customized. The backgrounds that Twitter provides are very limited. Thanks for the helpful tips.
Thanks for this wonderful tutorial! Was looking for some thing like this. I did not know making a twitter background is that easy that we need to play with dimensions.
Thanks again!
I searched many sites and here i found what i was looking for, thanks for valuable post
Thank you Mert, this was well written and very easy to follow, perfect.
Thanks! These are the best directions I have read so far. It worked like a charm.
You post great posts. Bookmarked !
Nice tip in there, will apply that for my company's twitter accounts
Cool, thanks for the tip
Thanks for this wonderful tutorial.Now i can have much better twitter background.
thanks for telling us the best and easiest way the easiest way. thanks a lot.
How about changing the links etc
http://www.twitter.com/Arsalanz_Ahmed
THANKS!!! So helpful!
Thanks dee. It is a custom one.
This is a nice tutorial, I will try it out at the office. I just joined Twitter
I like your weblog. Truly helpful and extremely motivational. Thanks a lot. This will assist me a great deal.
Hmm is anyone else experiencing problems with the images on this blog loading? I’m trying to figure out if its a problem on my end or if it’s the blog. Any responses would be greatly appreciated.
Hey thank for sharing .. I took me while till I get by this post .. very helpful with the twitter standard size ..
I am impress with your blog. Keep up the good work. I will be back and check your blog more often. Have a great night.
Ernesto Concepcion
The informative summary encouraged me a lot! Bookmarked your blog, extremely great topics just about everywhere that I see here! I really appreciate the info, thank you.
Quite insightful post. Never believed that it was this simple after all. I had spent a beneficial deal of my time looking for someone to explain this topic clearly and you’re the only 1 that ever did that. Kudos to you! Keep it up
Thanks for the useful post Mert, only logo looks good or logo with text looks nice.
I’ve been trying to log onto my twitter account for 3 days now, however every time I type in my username and password I get a message saying: ‘Twitter is over capacity’. It doesn’t matter what time of the day or night I log in, I always get this message, sooooooo frustrating! Does anyone know how to bypass this??