Personalise your Windows Live Home!
What else can we do on Windows Live? Well you can personalize your Home page in order to really make it your own. Do remember that its your Home page, no one else sees it but you! Let’s begin by choosing a theme. The theme that you choose for your home page will also reflect on your other Windows Live pages as well except your Events and your Spaces page.
1. Go to your home page and click on Options at the right hand side of the page. In the drop down list, you will see some theme icons, but there are others to choose from in addition to those displayed in the drop down list, so click on More Themes to access the full Themes page. Standard themes are just static and don’t change. Dynamic themes change all the time on your home and profile pages and are entirely dependent on your location. For example when its night time they show the night time and when its raining where you live, it rains in your theme as well. They work and know your location because you inputted your postcode or zip code when you created your Windows Live ID.
For this how-to I am going to choose a dynamic theme, the one with the small boat. You can easily see how each theme will look on the page by clicking on each of the theme icons. Click on Save once you have decided on your theme.
2. On the right hand side of the pages header, you will notice a grey square with a cross in the middle. You can add some photographs here to make your home page even more personal, so click on the square.
3. You will now be in the Add photos to Home page screen. Here you can add some photos from either your computer or alternatively you can add some from an existing album that you have already uploaded to Windows Live.
4. To add photos from your computer, click on Select photos from your computer, and you will be then able to view all of your photo files where you can select some photographs for your home page. You can select as many as you wish and they will then display in a scrolling manner across the header. Click on upload when you have finished.
5. To choose some photographs from an album that you have already uploaded to Windows Live, click on Add from an existing album where you can then select one of your albums so that you can choose which photos to display. Once your photos are displayed on your Home page, you are then given some more choices directly to the right of the photos on display.
6. Hover your mouse to the right of the photographs and you will see three small icons. the top one an x will hide all the photographs if you select it, the middle < will expand all of the photographs across the page or collapse them, and the bottom icon + allows you to add some more photographs to this display.
Customise your Windows Live Home.
7. Click on Options again and then from the drop down list select Customise this page.
Weather
You can now decide on the layout of your home page. First of all you can set up the weather display for your location if it is not already set up by inputting your exact location. You can also decide whether to show the temperature as Celsius or Fahrenheit.
Page Layout.
8. Next you can choose how your page is laid out and where you would like everything to be displayed on your home page. You can have your What’s new with your Network display above your incoming mail by clicking on it and then choosing the up arrow to the right. You can do the same in the right hand side column. NOTE. At this time you cannot swap items from the left hand column to the right and visa versa.
Number of items shown
9. Under this heading, you can choose how many photos to display in your home page slide show by choosing either to hide them all, just one or alternatively four, how many emails you would like to display either 1, 3, 5 or 10 and also how many What’s new with your Network updates you want to show on your home page, between five, ten, fifteen or twenty.
10. Once you are happy with your choices for your home page, then click on Save.
And that’s it. Your home page is now truly your own.
TG
