It seemed like a simple task. To change the default Twitter Template for the Quirk eMarketing Twitter page to something that resembles the current rather spiffy (if I have to say so myself) GottaQuirk look.
Twitter, the microblogging platform that has undergone massive growth in the past few months, is a compact and speedy messaging platform where your posts are limited to 140 characters or less.
I wish that this task took me 140 minutes or less. But it didn’t.
It took a lot longer.
I did everything they tell you to do. Created a Jpeg image of less than 800Kb’s in size and uploaded it via the File-upload functionality under the Design tab (visible when you are logged into your account).
My first attempt was a breeze. It all worked beautifully. I uploaded a test background to see how the Twitter system would handle it. Ok, so it worked well, on to the next step - complete the design and re-upload the new background Jpeg. After waiting for about 3 minutes as patiently as I can manage, I was greeted with this peculiar image:
Not really of much help... no worries. Lets just try again. And again. OK. Something is really not working. But it did work half an hour ago? So I try one more time. Nope. At this point I'm wondering if I'm the only one with this problem. So I did a quick search on Google, which led me to a "Error uploading profile picture or background image" Twitter Support Page (Submitted Feb 02, 100+ Comments) where they acknowledge the problem and go on to say that the problem with background images are two-fold:
- Some can't upload a profile or background image at all
- Profile images coming and going, and other weirdness (and other weirdness?)
They also point to another post (19th March) from Twitter Engineering which acknowledges the occurrence of these problems and has this little paragraph at the end.
"We’ve got all hands on deck working on these problems and we’ll continue to keep posting updates here about our progress."
Well, there you have it. They are working furiously to solve this issue.
In the meanwhile all I can suggest is to keep trying to upload your background image. I did and after 2 or three frustrating hours I managed to upload one background successfully (after becoming very closely aquainted with that lovely "Twitter Error Page").
The only problem is... I have a change request.
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Muti
The exact same problem happened to me: it took 3 days to upload & test my new Twitter background.
Why hasn't Twitter bothered to simplify the customization process yet? They haven't even posted guidelines or suggestions about how to design a background that will display properly for different resolutions.
On the other hand, I suppose they should be focusing on growing & maintaining the basic service - everything else is just bells & whistles.
Posted by Marcel on 2009/04/02