My Yahoo! Blog

New: Your photo as page theme.

A few months ago, we added a Customize Colors feature to My Yahoo! that allows you to start with one of the built-in themes and make it your own by choosing colors for different parts of your page. We received a lot of great feedback on this feature, including many requests to be able to use your own images. I’m excited to announce that this week we’ve enhanced the feature to let you do just that!

To reflect its broader capabilities, we’ve renamed the feature Customize Theme. You can find it by clicking the Change Appearance button at the top of your My Yahoo! page.

Just click on the background area for either the top of the page (what we call the Page Header) or the background of the main part of the page (what we call the Page Background). In either case, you’ll see that you now have a choice of an image or a color for the background. We’ve set things up so you can either upload an image from your hard drive or pull in an image from your Flickr account, if you have one.

A couple of tips for the page header area:
• An image that isn’t too busy works best.
• The ideal image is about 150 pixels high, so you’ll be able to see most of it (a larger image will be cropped).

Please check out our detailed Tutorial and Online Help on Customizing Colors and Backgrounds to guide you through using this new feature. Please let us know what you think.

–james
My Yahoo! Product Lead

The Year of the Ox will bring you…

One of my guilty pleasures, I must confess, is occasionally checking in on my horoscope. For me, it’s the same experience as opening a fortune cookie and seeing what’s in store. Naturally I’m intrigued by Chinese New Year, and because I was born in the Year of the Ox, I’m taking a keen interest in this cosmic forecast!

Did you know you can get your yearly horoscope on your My Yahoo! page? With all the buzz about the new lunar year, how could you miss out on seeing how your sign affects you this year? Check out Chinese Astrology page on Shine (brought to you by Yahoo!). After selecting your astrological animal, you can add the RSS feed to your page.

When you want to add an RSS feed to your page:
1. Follow instructions on the site to locate the feed URL (RSS icon) and copy it
2. In My Yahoo!, go to Add Content and then click “Add RSS Feed”
3. Paste the URL and click Add

Once you have the feed, try dressing up your page with the Chinese New Year theme. Click Change Appearance, and then from Choose Theme select Seasonal, and you’ll find it. Enjoy!

Adam
- My Yahoo! Marketing

Make it a homemade holiday.

The holiday season of lights, trees, wreaths, and gift-shopping is upon us. With the current state of the economy, there’s the temptation to say “bah-humbug” to it all, but even if you’re on a budget, there are still ways to share holiday cheer and goodwill.

With just few weeks to the holidays, there’s still ample time to create meaningful, homemade gifts for friends and family.

Getting crafty is easy with CRAFT Magazine’s Paper Crafts feed. They’ve got wonderful paper craft suggestions for the holidays. From a cool snowstorm paper garland to modern, paper ornaments, the ideas are fresh, stylish, and limitless.

Another great craft resource is FamilyFun.com. They’ve got a wide range of holiday crafts and recipe ideas that are fast and easy to make for kids and adults.

Also check out Suite 101.com’s Kids Crafts Articles feed which features a fun assortment of easy holiday projects for kids.

Now is also a great time to select Holiday themes for your My Yahoo! tabs. There are plenty of them to choose from: Gifts Galore, Hanukkah, Holiday Wrap, Sleigh Bells, or simply Winter. From Choose Theme select Seasonal, and you can view the available options.

Happy Holidays!

Helen
- My Yahoo! Editorial

New: Create your own page colors.

By popular request, you can now customize the colors for the header, background, and text on your My Yahoo! page. You can find this new feature under the Change Appearance menu on the upper left hand side of the page. Once there, you will see a link to Customize Colors. You’ll see two visual sections like the ones represented below.

By clicking on different areas of the first section you can highlight four different areas of your page to customize. The four areas include the header, sub-header, page background, and content area. Depending which area you select, you can see associated customize options available for that particular section on the right hand side.

A good tip to keep in mind is to choose background and text colors that have good contrast in relation to each other, so that the content remains legible. The best way to see how it works is to give it a try. It’s pretty intuitive once you start using it. At any time, you can change the color back to the original color you started with by clicking the Reset link that is shown next to the I’m Done button.

You can create 9 custom themes of your own. As you create new custom page colors, you can find your colors added to the list of Custom Themes available when you return to the Change Appearance Menu.

This feature is in beta and we’d love to hear your feedback. Go ahead, make your My Yahoo! page as unique as you are.

John
Product Manager

New Easter theme!

Hi everyone,

Fresh off the designer’s computer screen comes the new Easter theme for My Yahoo!.

Go ahead, dye your page with the vibrant colors of the Easter eggs hiding in the grass, catch the butterflies circling your Search bar, and spot the sneaky Easter Bunny behind your modules.

No hunting needed! You can try on this new theme here:
“Personalize this Page” > “Change Color” > “Seasonal.”

Add the Easter theme today!

Adam
- My Yahoo! Marketing