Verified, approved educators and non-profit institutions purchase land through the Second Life invoicing site:  specialorders.secondlife.com.  This site provides invoicing for educators and certain other customers.  See Invoicing for special orders for more information.

Note: Educators can purchase a Homestead Region without owning a full private region.

The invoicing option is available though the special orders selection in the Land Store.   

Invoicing for special orders

If you are an educator, non-profits organization, Resident under 18 years old or a business entities that requires a formal invoice, then place your order for private regions with the Special Island Order Form. Qualifying non-profit organizations and educators may be eligible to purchase private regions at a discounted rate; see the Special Island Order Form for more details.

Use the special order form under these conditions:

• Orders for eligible educational institution or not-for-profit. Your status as an educator or non-profit does require verification, and there is a minimum initial purchase of five regions to qualify for invoicing. The five region minimum purchase requirement does not apply to currently-invoiced customers.

• For all under 18 Resident, non-Linden Home, land orders (requires parental/guardian approval if under 18). Note: users under the age of 18 cannot purchase Linden Homes.

• Any order requiring an invoice (payments by wire transfer, check or credit card). Specifically for business entities purchasing more than five regions (minimum requirement does not apply to currently invoiced customers) requiring a formal invoice/receipt or PO# type process. PO# not required at the time of ordering.

If your purchase does not fall into these categories, then place your order at the Land Store.
 Note:

• All orders placed through the Special Island Order Form require advance payment of six or twelve months maintenance fees.

• Maintenance fees are added to your island order invoice based on the payment cycle chosen at a discounted rate of $99 for a full private region and $54.50 for homestead regions (subject to eligibility), or at the full maintenance fee rate of $199 for a full region, or $109 for homestead regions. All prices are listed in USD.

• Payment is made from the invoice which is issued upon the delivery of your island. Your first invoice will include both the setup and the first cycle of maintenance.

Where to get an invoice

Second Life offers the invoicing option though the special orders selection in the Land Store. You can also access invoicing directly from specialorders.secondlife.com.

Verification information

You need to provide the following information to use the invoicing option. Please read the guidelines below carefully. If your questions are not answered by this document, please submit a Support ticket to request explanation (include "Education" in the ticket summary).

Note: Second Life cannot provide invoicing option to Individuals, including educational professionals who wish to purchase a region for personal use or developers who wish to purchase a region for an institution.

Approval and Private Region delivery

Submitting an order does not obligate you to pay immediately; payment is made once the Private Region has been delivered and the invoice sent.

• When you place the order, you receive a sales order confirmation. This is merely an order confirmation, not a notice of delivery.

• Once you place the order, your order enters the approval queue.

• Once the order is approved, you receive an approval email and your order is placed in the delivery queue.

• After approval, delivery time under normal circumstances is 10-15 business days.

You cannot make a payment until you receive an invoice, which you then have 30 days to pay. Invoices for maintenance are emailed when the payment schedule is ready for renewal.

Warning: Late payment may result in the closure of your Private Region and the loss of any inventory it contains.

You have access to your account in Netsuite (Second Life's special orders system) through the special ordering website.

Note: Netsuite is a different website than secondlife.com.

In your Netsuite account, you will be able to:

• View your sales order.

• Add your credit card information.

• Pay your invoice with a credit card.

Payment Information

You may pay via check, credit card or wire transfer. We cannot accept PayPal or use funds from your Second Life account to pay for your invoiced Private Region order.

Note: Currently, VAT is not added to our invoiced orders, but we will inform you if this changes. Find out more about VAT and Second Life in Account balance.

Wire Transfer

See Account balance for more information on paying by wire transfer. You must pay your bank's wiring charges, which are added to your invoice total. Be sure to reference your invoice number in the wire details.
 

Credit Card

To pay by credit card:

1. Log into your Netsuite account. You are directed to menu options.

2. Select Make a Payment. All outstanding invoices appear.

3. Move to the bottom of the page, where you may add your credit card information for payment of the invoices you select.

Note: The list of outstanding invoices is not the sales order document.

Check or Bank Draft

Please submit a check or bank draft to:

Linden Research Inc
Dept. 34109
PO Box 39000
San Francisco CA 94111
USA

Those who use Purchase Order numbers should send us the required vendor forms for completion. We will add the PO# to the invoice as soon as we receive it.

Other useful information:

• Federal Tax ID#: 94-3364615

• VAT #: EU826011179

For more information specific to educators and non-profit institutions, please see:

• Second Life Education FAQs

• Education and Non-Profit Discount Terms and Conditions

• Other resources for educators in Second Life

• Educator success stories

• Institution directory

• How to create a secure space for a classroom setting

Searching for an item in your inventory can be a frustrating affair; some Residents have over 150,000 inventory items to sort through! Large inventories can present many problems, from difficulty finding objects to technical problems like inventory lists which fail to load completely or even difficulty logging in.

Luckily, you have many handy features at your disposal to help you organize and keep track of all your worldly possessions. 

Get organized

The first step toward keeping track of your items is keeping them organized. By creating a system of folders in your inventory, you can easily categorize objects you've acquired.

You can make as many folders in your inventory as you want, but try to create your folders using a nested system -- this means having a few major category folders in the top level My Inventory folder, then creating sub-folders in those major categories.

To create a new folder:

1. Right-click an existing folder in the Inventory window and choose New Folder. 

2. Give your folders names that really help you remember what you put in them. "Cars," "Board Game Pieces," and "Hippo Costume Parts" are good examples, but a more detailed naming system may be necessary if your inventory is extensive.

Note: Folders with unique icons (such as Library or Clothing) cannot be deleted, moved, or renamed.

Be specific

How can you best organize your objects such that you can easily find them later? You may find that sorting items into categories can help narrow your search considerably.

For example: Having distinct categories for textures can make it easier to find similar content:

• Textures:

  • Fabric

  • Glass

  • Liquid

  • Metal

  • Stone

  • Wood

Once you're comfortable with your folder structure, move things into the new folders (just drag-and-drop) so that you can find them easily. You can also select and move multiple items at the same time by holding down the Shift key.

Organization tips

• You can create multiple copies of objects in your inventory. For instance, you may want to wear the same shirt as part of two different outfits: to make a second copy of the shirt, right-click it, select Copy, select the folder for your second outfit, right-click it, and select Paste. For more information on managing your wardrobe, see Outfits.

• You can open a second inventory window for easy organizing (drag items from one window to a folder in the other window) and easy passing of objects (drag things from one window to a calling card in the other). To open a second window, click the Gear icon at the bottom of the Inventory window and select New Inventory Window.

• Empty your trash often! Reducing the total number of items in your inventory helps it load faster.

If you find yourself with a large number of duplicate objects cluttering your inventory, you can use the following procedure to find and eliminate them:

1. Open your Inventory window by clicking the Inventory button at the side of your screen.

2. Enter the exact name of the duplicated item in the search bar at the top of the Inventory window, and press the Enter key.

3. Wait a few moments while Second Life indexes and searches your inventory. If you have a very large number of objects in your inventory, this step may take a few minutes.

4. Select all the duplicate items found in your search. Make sure to leave at least one for yourself!

5. Press the delete key.

6. To restore your normal Inventory view, click the X button in the search bar, or close your Inventory window and reopen it.

Received items

The Received items feature allows you to conveniently manage all recently received Marketplace items in your inventory.  Whenever you receive new inventory items or folders from shopping on the Marketplace, they appear in an expandable pane at the bottom of the Inventory window.

To use your newly purchased items, drag the folder either into your main Inventory window for storage and organization, or drag an object icon onto the ground to be rezzed. You can also right-click an object and select "Add" to attach it to your avatar; many purchases arrive as a HUD which unpacks the content for you when you wear it.

Other useful features

There are several subtle-but-welcome features on the Inventory window, including:

X Marks the Spot: An X, which clears the current query when pressed, appears at the very right of the search bar when you've entered text.

Inventory window configuration options are available by clicking the gear icon (⚙️) on the lower left of the window.

• Sort Folders Always by Name: When you check this it forces your folders to display alphabetically, even if Sort by Most Recent is also selected. If you uncheck Sort Folders Always by Name, folders with the newest received items appear at the top of the list. Try sorting folders alphabetically and by date and see which method you like best!

• Sort System Folders to Top: Selecting this option places all system folders on top.

• Show Filters: Lets you modify and reset the current filters, showing and hiding categories of inventory items to declutter your view. You can also choose to show only items added Since Logoff or since a certain number of Hours Ago or Days Ago.

Tip: The My Inventory and Recent tabs each have their own unique filter settings, meaning that what you filter in one tab does not affect the other. You can use this feature to your advantage by sorting your inventory into two different views at the same time.

If you've never used filters before, try this to get a hands-on feel:

1. In the Inventory window, click the My Inventory tab and open a lot of folders by clicking on the white arrows. As they expand, the arrows rotate to point downwards, indicating that the folders are open.

2. Click on the Gear icon and select Show Filters.

3. In the Filters window, uncheck all the category checkboxes and watch things "disappear." Don't worry, you haven't lost anything! It's all still there; it's just hidden. Re-check the boxes to make the items reappear.

You can also toggle all item types with a single click by using the All and None buttons in the Filters window. Below these is Always show folders, which displays all folders when doing a search. Unchecking it displays folders containing matches.

Tip: If ever you think you've lost inventory, check that your filters are showing everything! Try selecting Reset Filters from the Gear icon menu in the Inventory window.

Advanced Inventory Management

There are a number of other tricks which aren't immediately obvious but are extremely useful for highly-efficient organization of your inventory.

Multi-View: Click on the Gear icon and select New Inventory Window so you have two inventory windows open at once. Now you can move items back and forth between two folders and have a different view in each one. What's more, each window has its own set of filters.

Drag and Drop: This is very useful if you want to sort your recent items. Just click-and-drag any folder or item (Ctrl+Left-click to select multiples) from within one tab to the other tab's title: the view switches immediately. Move the cursor over the folder you're looking for, and release the mouse button. The folders spring back quickly, and your items have been moved!

Filter Master: Check Since Logoff or enter a time for both tabs, and you have what amounts to two Recent tabs. If unsure of your changes, just use the Gear icon menu to Reset Filters. 

Note: Main system folders, meaning the ones with special icons like Body Parts and Objects, can't be moved. Neither can the Library's contents or the Trash.

How to get an inventory item-count

To find out how many items you have in your inventory, type anything into the search field at the top of the Inventory window. Wait a few moments while Second Life indexes your inventory, then look at the item count in the title bar of the window.

Tips for recovering lost items

If an item mysteriously disappears from your inventory, use the the procedures below to locate it.

• Click the Inventory button on the toolbar and select the Recent tab. Items returned since last log off will be stored here.

• Clear the Second Life Viewer's cache. 

• Search for the item by entering its name in the Filter Inventory field of the Inventory window.

• Search the Lost And Found folder.

• Search the Trash folder.

• Search folders listed at the top of the Inventory window.

• Your filter settings may be hiding some of your inventory items. To reset them, click the Gear icon at the bottom left of the Inventory window and choose Reset Filters.

How to find the UUID of an inventory item

If you make extensive use of LSL scripts, you may want to know the UUID (Universally Unique Identifier) of a texture or sound in your avatar's inventory. You can easily copy any inventory item's UUID to your computer's clipboard by right-clicking it and selecting Copy Asset UUID.

This method is great for finding sound and texture UUIDs, but is not always effective for other inventory types. Here is a short list of exceptions:

• A notecard's UUID changes every time it is edited and saved.

• There is no way to find an object's UUID until it is rezzed inworld; this is because each rezzed copy of the object must have a unique UUID. Similarly, if you take an object into your inventory, it is assigned a new UUID the next time you rez it.

• There is no way to find an LSL script's UUID while it is in your inventory, for similar reasons.

• You must have full permissions on any inventory item to copy its UUID; this also applies to calling cards, which are by nature "no-transfer" items.

LSL has several detection functions that can help determine an object or avatar's UUID. If you are interested in learning to use LSL for this purpose, see the LSL Portal.

• On most web browsers, the Second Life installer appears at the bottom of your browser window immediately after downloading.

• Right-click the installer in your browser window and choose Open.

• Drag the Second Life logo onto your Applications folder to begin installation.

• If you are asked if you want to continue, click Open.

• Second Life launches automatically when it is finished installing. To log in, enter the username and password you chose during registration, then click the Log In button.

• If Second Life does not launch automatically, or when you want to launch it at a later time, you can find and launch the Second Life Viewer in your Applications folder

Note: If you ever need to download the installer again, you can always get the latest version of the Second Life Viewer installer from https://secondlife.com/support/downloads/.

The term region refers to a simulated space on the Second Life world map. Every region is the same physical size (256 meters by 256 meters on each side), and if regions are adjacent to one another, Residents can fly or walk across them in a large connected map. Private regions are regions which are in an estate owned by an individual Resident instead of Linden Lab; a private estate owner has a great deal more control over their regions than someone who owns a parcel of land within a region. For example, private estate owners can restart their regions whenever they like, or change the terrain's texture from grass to snow, or control who can access the region at all.

Private Region Setup

As a private estate owner, most settings that can affect your private region & the estate that it's in are accessible through the World > Region/Estate menu. You can read more about the Region/Estate menu in detail in our KB article Region/Estate window.

Changes made on the Estate tab of this window will affect all regions inside a particular estate -- for example, if a Resident has two private regions adjacent to one another and opts to have both regions in the same Estate, those two regions will share certain settings (like public access or whether or not voice chat is permitted).

Controlling Region Access

In conjunction with the Estate tab's public access settings, the Access tab of the World > Region/Estate window allows you to specify who is permitted to enter your region, who is banned, and who has additional powers within the region as an Estate Manager.

The estate owner and any Estate Managers that have been added on the Access tab will always be able to teleport to the region, regardless of other settings.

To open your private region to the general public, set the following options:

• On the Estate tab, select Anyone can visit

  • You can limit this to Residents over 18, Residents who have payment info on file, or Residents who are not a scripted agent if you wish by checking the relevant boxes below the Anyone can visit option

• On the Estate tab, check Allow Direct Teleport

  • If you do not have Allow Direct Teleport checked, only the estate owner and estate managers will be able to teleport into the region unless you opt to set up a telehub. Allow Direct Teleport is disabled by default for new regions.

To keep your region private to only yourself or your specifically allowed individuals and groups, set the following options:

• On the Estate tab:

  • Select Allow only residents and groups listed on the Access tab

  • Select Allow Direct Teleport

• On the Access tab:

  • Select the tab for Allowed and click Add... to any add Residents you'd like to permit to visit your region freely

  • If you'd like to allow specific group members, select Allowed Groups and click the Add... button to select a group from your current groups list

With this option enabled, anyone in Second Life can visit your region, provided that they can teleport to a location within your region. Within a region, the World > About Land parcel level settings also control who can visit or teleport to a piece of land. If a Resident is not permitted on any of the parcels inside a region, they won't be able to teleport or enter the region, regardless of the region's access settings. If someone is having trouble going to your private region, be sure to check both the Region/Estate window settings and the About Land settings for access and teleport routing.

Setting region maturity

Maturity ratings designate the type of content and behavior allowed in a region and affect search results.

There are three maturity ratings in Second Life: General, Moderate, and Adult.

To access Adult search results and regions, you must be at least 18 years old. For more information on how to access adult content, see Accessing Adult land and content.

Note: Regardless of maturity rating, all content in Second Life must abide by our content guidelines. For the official content guidelines, including examples of prohibited content, please see Content Guidelines.

To set your region's maturity rating: 

• Open the World > Region/Estate > Region tab

• From the Rating dropdown menu, select General, Moderate, or Adult

• Click Apply

For more information about maturity ratings in Second Life, see Maturity ratings.

Telehubs and direct teleport

There are two basic approaches to controlling where visitors to your estates appear: you can either use a telehub to force all visitors to appear at a set location, or you can allow visitors to teleport directly to wherever they wish.

If you choose to use a telehub, you must disable Allow Direct Teleport on the Estate tab of the REGION/ESTATE window (World > Region/Estate). In addition, you should clear any landing points that might be set for the parcels on your estate (using the About Land window's OPTIONS tab), as they can cause the telehub to malfunction.

If you choose to allow direct teleportation, you should disable or remove any telehub object that you have in your region. You can, however, use parcel landing points to provide parcel-level control over where people appear when they teleport into the region.

Configuring telehubs

Telehubs are controlled through the REGION/ESTATE window, on the Region tab.

Note: If you are the owner of a Region, you always teleport directly to the center of it instead of to a set telehub or landing point.

To connect your telehub:

1. Right-click on the object and select Edit.

2. In the REGION/ESTATE window, click the Region tab.

3. Click Manage Telehub.

4. Click Add Spawn.

5. Click your telehub object again, and click Connect telehub.

Here are some things to consider regarding telehubs:

• Format: The telehub references an object on your Private Region or island. This can be any object, but generally it should be phantom and raised slightly off the ground (avatars arrive in the center of it). You can use any prim.

• Movement: The telehub is saved as a bookmark to a specific object; it is not saved in the object itself. As a result, you may freely move your telehub object around; the telehub waypoint moves with it. However, if the object ever leaves the region (for example, you accidentally Return it or Take it to Inventory), the telehub waypoint is lost, and you need to create a new telehub.

• Spawnpoints: You can create multiple spawnpoints for your telehub. Incoming residents arrive at one of the spawnpoints. To make spawnpoints:

  1. Create transparent cubes at each location you wish people to spawn.

  2. Place the telehub object in the middle.

  3. Save the spawnpoints and connect them to the telehub. Spawnpoints are saved as offsets of the telehub (i.e. "two meters west and one meter north of the telehub"). As such, the objects used to create the spawnpoints may be deleted (though the telehub must remain as always).

  • Moving the telehub moves all spawnpoints as a group.

  • Incoming visitors are routed to the nearest spawnpoint or to a random spawnpoint (especially when the nearest gets overcrowded) chosen from the points you designated.

• Permissions: The estate owner, estate managers, or owners of a group to whom the land is deeded can always freely teleport around the estate.

• Multi-region estates: Each region in an estate can have its own telehub. If you'd prefer to have one telehub that functions for all regions within an estate, you can try defining a single telehub in just one region on the estate and disabling Allow Direct Teleport at the estate level.

Covenants

A covenant is a set of terms and conditions determined by an estate owner. It may outline such details as local theme, rental fees, architectural regulations, and rules of behavior in the Private Region. To purchase a parcel on an estate, a Resident must agree to the estate's covenant.

You don't need to set a covenant to enable land sale on your estate, but you should do so if you plan to establish zoning or other rules.

Covenants are viewable by the parcel owner at all times in the Covenant tabs of the About Land window and the REGION/ESTATE window.

Setting the covenant

To set or change the covenant for an estate, simply drop a new notecard into the Covenant box in the Covenant tab of the REGION/ESTATE window.

Remember:

• The covenant applies across every region in an estate.

• Estate managers can set parcels for sale and can reset the covenant.

• Land parcels can be reclaimed at any time by the estate owner.

• Deselecting the land sales box does reset parcels already set for sale.

Covenants and communication

Covenants are intended to communicate the terms and conditions of owning property on your estate. Do not change the terms of a covenant without informing your Residents — you wouldn't want any service provider you pay to hold you to rules you didn't consent to in advance. Your covenant should be clearly written and include:

• Features and benefits - Covenants are used for advertising. What makes your land valuable? Do you boast an exceptionally beautiful beach, or do you pride yourself on top-notch service?

• Payment information - Many estate owners use rental boxes or other automated means to keep track of payments. Your payment system should be as straightforward as possible.

• Code of conduct - What a renter can and cannot do.

• Zoning or theming - For example, you can state that no stores are allowed in a residential area; or you can disallow futuristic-looking builds in your ancient Egypt-themed estate.

• Best ways to communicate with you as the estate owner - If your instant messages easily get capped, make sure to include an email or web form where you can be reached. Some estate owners also delegate support to their estate managers or other staff.

Tip: Communication is key! Make sure your renters can easily get in touch with you.

Estate owners and managers are the final arbiters of the estate. Individual landowners (renters) on your estate may not directly request rollbacks or other technical support (such as restarts) but should contact you or your estate managers for those needs.

Learn from existing covenants

Visit Private Regions where estate owners already have covenants before you write your own.

Tip: Many estate owners put their covenants on their websites, which are also used to promote their property. Try searching for phrases like "second life land rent covenant".

1. In the Viewer, choose World > Search. The Second Life Search window opens.

2. Choose Land & Rentals from the dropdown menu at the top and click Search (you may specify a keyword if you wish). A list of classified real estate ads appears.

3. In the lefthand column, select For Sale, customize the Area and Price fields as desired, and choose Private Island - Full from the dropdown menu under Type. The filters update the listings automatically.

4. Click on a listing to view more details. When you find a property that interests you, click Teleport.

5. Once you arrive at the region, select World > About Land > COVENANT.

6. Read the covenant to see if it contains anything useful. If yes, take notes. If not, move on.

Warning: Using ideas from another covenant in part to inspire your own is learning, but copying another covenant entirely is plagiarizing. Learn from other Residents -- don't copy their work.

Region Environment Settings

Region environment settings provide region managers the ability to customize the environment settings for their region. For example, a gothic castle might have a dark and gloomy environment, or a tropical island might be always bright and sunny. Residents who enter the region automatically see those settings unless they have chosen personal overrides.

You may also see this feature referred to by its old name, Windlight Environment Settings.

Environment settings control how you see the water and the sky (including the air around you) in Second Life. When you enter a region, by default you see the environment settings that have been configured for that region. If no region-specific settings have been configured, you see the default Second Life environment.

The environment controls provide some sample pre-defined settings, but you can create your own settings and either use them as personal settings or apply them to any region for which you are an estate manager.

For more information on setting a region's environment, visit the Environment editor page of our KnowledgeBase.

Region Boundaries & Environments

The environment you see depends on the region you are in at the time. If adjacent regions have different environment settings, any parts of the adjacent region you can see still appear with the environment settings of the region you are looking from. When you cross a boundary into a region with different settings, the environment transitions smoothly over a few seconds to the new local settings.

Environments & Teleports

When you teleport into a region, there may be a brief period during which you see your previous environment or the default environment before the local environment settings are established. 

Getting the most from your region

Land Sales in Private Regions

The mechanics of buying and selling land in a Private Region is very similar to the process used on the mainland, however there are a few key differences to keep in mind.

Similarities

• As the seller, the Private Region owner can split parcels of the region and set them for sale.

• The mechanical act of buying the land remains unchanged.

Differences

• Parcels in Private Regions are governed by covenants.

• If you buy land in a Private Region, it does not count against your land use tier, but the owner of the Private Region may charge you a similar fee for continuing use of the land.

• The Private Region owner may evict you from your parcel in a Private Region at any time. Private Region owners have absolute power over their estates and are within their rights to reclaim land as they see fit. Make sure to read your region's covenant closely for terms of use before you buy your parcel.

• Private Region owners control access to their land (using the Region/Estate window), for example by restricting access to Residents based on payment status or by setting region maturity to General, Moderate, or Adult.

Tip: If a region owner changes the maturity setting for their region, it may have an effect on who can access your parcel and view search listings made from it. Read the region covenant and communicate with the region owner (or estate manager where applicable) to avoid any disruptions to your parcel settings or access.

Reselling land

To allow Residents to sell or deed land they have purchased from you, select Allow Land Resell in the Region tab. Without this option checked, Residents will not be able to sell a parcel to another avatar or deed the parcel to a group -- this setting controls all ownership changes aside from the Resident abandoning the parcel or the estate owner reclaiming it to their own ownership.

Reclaiming land parcels from tenants

If one of your tenants has violated the terms of your covenant and you wish to evict them and reclaim their land in your private region, you can choose the Reclaim Land... button from the ABOUT LAND window.

Reclaiming land switches ownership of the parcel, but not the objects on it, back to the estate owner. Please be advised, if the parcel's About Land > Objects > Auto return other Residents' objects setting is enabled, reclaiming a parcel can cause those objects to be returned automatically as a grouped-up coalesced object bundle. It may be more considerate to return a tenant's objects using the right-click > Manage > Return option before reclaiming the land.

Estate managers can also use the About Land window to Abandon the land back to the estate owner's ownership.

Hosting large events

Important: If you plan to host a large gathering on a Private Region, please give Linden Lab as much advance notice as possible. Provide the date, expected attendance, location, name of event, event sponsor and event manager.

Keep the following technical considerations in mind:

• The maximum number of avatars on a region can be set to 100, but best practice is to limit each region to 50. Remember to plan for crowd control. Adjust the number of avatars allowed on your region at one time by selecting World > Region/Estate and changing the number in the Agent Limit field on the Region tab.

• Creating a group and limiting access to the region to that group can be an effective way to manage Residents and sustain interaction beyond the event itself.

• Linden Lab recommends considering a multiple-locations strategy for large events. This requires considering how to allocate avatars to the locations manually, via scripting, or by distributing different arrival locations. A four-corners strategy (to get about 200 avatars in one place) has drawbacks, since across-boundary info exchange and drawing will affect performance.

• If this is your first event, you may want to work with a developer or someone who has already had experience managing large events. You can find developers in the Developer Directory. Event managers can be located through SLClassifieds or one of the many exchanges or periodicals that have grown up around Second Life.

Improving region performance

Statistics Bar

To gauge the performance of your region, check the region's Frames Per Second (FPS) in the Statistics Bar:

1. Open the Advanced menu by selecting World > Show > Advanced Menu.

2. While standing on your land, select Advanced > Performance Tools > Statistics Bar.

Interpreting the Statistics Bar can be a bit overwhelming, so we'll guide you through the relevant parts here.

To interpret the Sim FPS performance of your region:

• 45 FPS: The highest possible value. No action necessary.

• 35 - 44 FPS: This is good performance; if it never goes below 35 FPS, you don't need to tune if it.

• 10 - 35 FPS: This is very slow, and should be noticeable. Adjustment is needed to improve your region's performance.

• 0 - 10 FPS: This is terrible. You may have trouble moving or performing simple tasks. See above.

To see more detail on what's slowing down your region, expand the Statistics Bar by clicking on the Time (ms) line; additional region statistics will appear:

The Total Frame Time displays the number of milliseconds needed (ms) to display a single frame. Total Frame Time greater than 22.2 ms means your Sim FPS will be below 45 FPS. For a detailed explanation of the values beneath Total Frame Time, see the Statistics Bar KB article's Time's section. 

Try these tips for improving performance in a region that is running slowly:

• Having a large number of avatars in a region is the most common cause of low region FPS. Reduce the number of avatars by selecting World > Region/Estate and adjusting the number in the Agent Limit field to specify the number of avatars allowed in your region at any one time.

• Reduce the number of prims on your region.

• Reduce the number of objects on your region.

• In the Statistics Bar, the Script Time line shows how many milliseconds each of the scripts in your region is taking to run. If this value is over 5 milliseconds, check to see which scripts are the busiest in your region by opening the Debug tab in your Region/Estate window and clicking Get Top Scripts. Once you know which scripts are consuming your region's resources, you can remove, replace or optimize them. Also, note that reducing the total number of scripts in your region can improve performance.

• In the Statistics Bar, the Sim Time (Physics) line shows how many milliseconds your physics calculations are taking. If this value is over 4 milliseconds, check to see which colliders are the most active by opening the Debug tab in your Region/Estate window and clicking Get Top Colliders. Once you know which objects are your top colliders, you can remove, replace or optimize them.

• Reduce the use of the following items, which slow down region performance: large or numerous textures; sculpted prims, twisted tori, and other geometrically complex objects; particle effects.

Restarting Private Regions

Region performance can degrade over time due to an accumulation of long-running scripts, physical objects, and object collisions. If your region has not been restarted recently, restarting it may provide a boost in performance. You can restart your regions from inside Second Life using the Region/Estate window, or from the Land Manager on the Second Life website.

Regions in Second Life are typically restarted by Linden Lab at least once a week for maintenance purposes, either on Tuesday for most regions in Second Life running on the "Second Life Server" channel, or Wednesday for regions running a "Second Life RC" server version. You can check which version of the simulator or server a region is running by checking Help > About Second Life while you're in the region.

Restarting a region from inside Second Life

To restart a region from inside Second Life:

1. Go to the region you would like to restart.

2. Choose World > Region/Estate from the top menu bar.

3. In the Region/Estate window, click the Debug tab.

4. Click the Restart Region button.

5. A two minute countdown begins and all visitors to the region are notified that the region is about to restart. If you need to cancel the restart within the two minute countdown, click Cancel Restart to cancel the countdown.

Restarting a region from the Land Manager

To restart a region from the Second Life website:

1. Visit the Land portal on the Second Life website. If you are not logged into the website, you are prompted for your credentials.

2. On the left side of the page, click Land manager to expand the list of Land Manager pages.

3. Click My Regions to see a list of your current Estates.

4. Under My Estates, click the name of the Estate that contains your region.

5. On the My Regions page, find the name of the region you would like to restart and click Restart or Safe Mode:

   • Restart - Begins a two minute countdown and notifies all visitors that the region is about to restart. Restarts initiated from the Land Manager cannot be canceled.

   • Safe mode - Restarting the region in Safe Mode causes it to come back online with scripts, physics, and collisions disabled, which will affect operation of content in the region until those features are manually re-enabled. Safe Mode persists through additional restarts of the region; the only way to return to normal operation is to manually re-enable scripts, physics, and collisions in the region using the Region/Estate window.

Re-enabling scripts, physics, and collisions after restarting in Safe Mode

To re-enable scripts, physics, and collisions after restarting in Safe Mode:

1. Go to the region that is in Safe Mode.

2. Choose World > Region/Estate from the top menu bar.

3. In the Region/Estate window, click the Debug tab.

4. Un-check the boxes for Disable Scripts, Disable Collisions, and Disable Physics, then click the Apply button.

Scheduling Private Region Restarts

Private region owners and estate managers may schedule recurring restarts for their regions from the Region tab of the World > Region/Estate menu. Restarts will occur on the scheduled days within a 10 minute window at the specified scheduled time.

Region restarts can also be scheduled with the Region Debug Console. As with most Region Debug Console commands, help region_schedule entered in the Region Debug console window will show a list of command variables available and a basic explanation of how to use the command.

Scheduling Recurring Restarts from the Region/Estate Window

The easiest way to schedule region restarts is to use the World > Region/Estate > Region tab:

• On the Region tab, click Manage Restart Schedule...

• In the Region Restart Schedule popup, select the days of the week that you'd like to schedule your restart on

• Specify the time you'd like the restart to occur -- please note, this time must be in UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). UTC is typically +7 hours ahead of SLT (Second Life Time or Pacific Time) during Daylight Savings or +8 hours ahead of SLT during Standard Time.

• Click Save to save your preferred options.

• If you'd like to change these scheduled restarts in the future, simply open the Manage Restart Schedule... floater again and update your preferences.

Scheduling Recurring Restarts from the Region Console

Restarts may be scheduled to occur either every day at a particular time or only on particular days of the week. All times are specified in 24 hour UTC, sometimes referred to as 'military time' – so, 1:00 p.m. becomes 13:00, 2:00 p.m. becomes 14:00, etc.

To schedule regular restarts: 

• Open the Region Debug Console (World > Region/Estate > Debug tab > Region Debug Console button or the keyboard shortcut ctrl-shift-`)

• At the prompt, enter the region_schedule options of your choice

• For command assistance, type help region_schedule in the Region Debug console and hit enter

• Some examples of region_schedule commands include:

  • region_schedule set restart daily <HH:MM>

  • region_schedule set restart weekly <days> <HH:MM>

How to schedule daily restarts in the Region Debug Console

To schedule a daily restart on the region enter the following command:

> region_schedule set restart daily <HH:MM>

Where HH:MM is the time at which to restart in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). So to restart the region daily at 6:00 a.m. Pacific (13:00 UTC) enter:

> region_schedule set restart daily 13:00

For an 11:00 p.m. Eastern (03:00 UTC) daily restart the command would be:

> region_schedule set restart daily 3:00

How to schedule weekly restarts in the Region Debug Console

For scheduling restarts on particular days of the week, the command takes the format:

> region_schedule set restart weekly <days> <HH:MM>

HH:MM is once again the time at which to restart in UTC in hours (HH) and minutes (MM).

In the console command, days refers to a short sequence of letters which indicate which day of the week to restart the region, with each day represented by a unique single letter as follows:
S = Sunday
M = Monday
T = Tuesday
W = Wednesday
R = Thursday
F = Friday
A = Saturday

To schedule a restart on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday at 4:30 a.m. SLT/Pacific, we first determine the UTC time (11:30am UTC). Thus, the command would look like:

> region_schedule set restart weekly STR 11:30

For restarts on Monday and Friday at 9:00 p.m. Eastern, we determine the UTC time (1:00am UTC) and the command looks like:

> region_schedule set restart weekly TA 1:00

Checking the Region Restart Schedule

To see currently scheduled region restarts, enter the command region_schedule in the Region Debug Console without any other text and hit enter. By default, the current restart schedule should be displayed.

Clearing Scheduled Region Restarts

To clear a region's scheduled restarts, use the unset command in the Region Debug Console.

> region_schedule unset restart

This will clear any scheduled restarts from the region. 

Changing your private region

Transferring Private Regions

Linden Lab can perform Resident-to-Resident transfers of Private Regions (islands), but both buyer and seller need to agree on a price. Both buyer and seller must submit support tickets, via the Support Portal, naming the region to be transferred and the transaction amount agreed upon in Linden dollars (L$). Both sides also have to confirm other details about the region being transferred. We can rename the Private Region and move it from its original location at the time of the transfer for no additional cost. Please include these requests in the buyer's transfer ticket.

Either party can cancel the transfer by closing out their ticket prior to the transfer being performed.

Important: If the buyer's payment fails for any reason, then the transfer is cancelled and no action is taken. Both Second Life accounts must be in good standing for the transfer to take place.

Here's how to submit a ticket:

1. Go to the Support Portal and log in with your Second Life account.

2. Open a new support case.

3. Under What type of problem are you having? select Land & Region.

4. Under Land & Region, choose Initiate Region Sale or Initiate Region Purchase as appropriate.

5. Complete the other required fields. The information must be consistent for both the buyer and seller tickets.

6. When all the details have been entered, scroll to the bottom and click Submit.

If both tickets match (that is, they state the same details and value), we charge the buyer's Second Life account in Linden dollars (L$). Once the charge goes through, we credit the seller the same amount minus the transfer fee.

Private Region transfers usually take 5-10 business days from the time both tickets are received.

Transfer fees

There is a transfer fee per region, debited from the seller's account, which pays for backend work by Linden Lab, including:

• Changing estate ownership settings

• Billing transfer

• Region name change

• Moving the region

Transfer fees are set in USD, though they may be paid in L$ as shown by the table below. The L$ Transfer Fee cost may be updated from time to time based on the changing LindeX Market Rate. The transfer fee amount depends upon the type of region being transferred, and whether it will maintain its grandfathered pricing status, if applicable: 

Monthly billing after a region transfer

The new owner assumes the monthly billing, which is charged on the same day of the month as always. Private Regions, unlike the mainland, bill for the coming month. If the Private Region bills on the 12th of the month, it will continue to bill on the 12th of the month. This means that if the Private Region is transferred on the 14th, the current owner pays for that month. If the Private Region is transferred on the 10th, the new owner pays the fee for the month.

Allowing Neighbors on the World Map

If you own an estate in the Second Life® world, you can allow others to buy land in spaces that are directly next to the land you own. You can specify Residents in the Allowed Neighbors list for each region in your estates.

For example: Joe Resident and Helen Resident are friends who own their own estates and want to be able to buy land in the Land Portal next to each other. Joe's estate, Joegalaxy, contains a Private Region called Joetopolis. In the Land Portal's Estate Management tab, Joe can specify that Helen is an allowed neighbor for Joetopolis. Helen can now use the Land Portal to buy Private Regions that are next to Joetopolis, including spaces that only share a corner with Joetopolis. To specify a Resident you want to be able to buy land next to yours:

1. Log into the Land Portal.

2. Click Land Manager > My Regions.

3. Select the estate for which you want to specify allowed neighbors.

4. In the Allowed Neighbors column, click the edit link for a specific region.

5. Type the name of the Resident you want to allow as a neighbor into the text field and click add.

6. Click close. The Resident you specified can now buy land next to that region.

To remove a Resident from the Allowed Neighbors list for a Region:

1. Log into the Land Portal.

2. Click Land Manager > My Regions.

3. Select the estate for which you want to specify allowed neighbors.

4. In the Allowed Neighbors column, click the edit link for a specific region.

5. Click the X next to the name of the Resident you want to remove.

6. Click close. The Resident you specified can no longer buy land next to that region

Be aware that adding and removing other Residents to your Allowed Neighbors list can result in some interesting circumstances. Consider the following example:

• Joe Resident adds Helen Resident to the Allowed Neighbors list for his Private Region Joetopolis.

• Helen Resident buys a Private Region next to Joetopolis and names it Helen City.

Now, suppose...

• Joe wants to buy a Private Region next to Joetopolis that also shares a corner or side with Helen City. Joe can't actually do this unless Helen adds Joe to the Allowed Neighbors list for Helen City.

• Joe removes Helen from the Allowed Neighbors list for Joetopolis. Now neither Joe nor Helen can buy a Private Region that shares a corner or side with Joetopolis or Helen City.

• Joe removes Helen from the Allowed Neighbors list for Joetopolis, and Helen adds Joe to the Allowed Neighbors list for Helen City. Now only Joe can buy a Private Region that shares a corner or side with Helen City.

Moving and Renaming Private Regions

Pricing for Private Region Management Services

If you own one or more private regions in Second Life, there are several special services you may occasionally need, such as region moves and region name changes. The fees for these services depend on the number of private regions you own; please refer to the following chart to determine the cost of each service:

To request one of these services, please submit a case through the support portal on the Second Life website. Additional information on how to move and rename private regions can be found in the next sections.

Renaming a Private Region

To initiate the renaming process, submit a support case stating that you would like to change your region's name and that you accept the fee.

The new name must comply with the Guidelines for Private Region Naming. Private region names are granted at the sole discretion of Linden Lab.

Moving a Private Region

Private region owners can request to move a region to another location on the World Map, subject to availability. Certain areas of the World Map are reserved for special purposes, including the mainland and themed expansions provided by Linden Lab.

If you would like to move your region adjacent to another Resident's region, they must allow you as a neighbor in our system prior to your request for the region move. Note that your private region cannot be rotated, so what is currently North will always be North.

The fee for moving a region is charged for each private region, for any movement.

Note: Moving your private region causes links made from the Picks tab of the Profile window to become inaccurate.

Landmarks continue to function after a move, but home locations may need to be reset. The World Map may take several hours to update with the new Private Region location.

Land impact change

It is possible for you to increase the amount of land impact that your Private Region can support. By default, a standard full region has a hard capacity limit of 20,000 land impact worth of content and they can be upgraded to a hard limit of 30,000 land impact of content. Please be advised that while it may be possible to add this much content to a region, the more objects, scripts, and other items that are in a region, the more likely it is that the region will experience performance issues. Regions save themselves and the content within them regularly; the more content that's inside a region, the larger the save file, and the longer this process can take. Building efficiently and using your region's resources wisely will always help create a better experience with region performance.

Increasing land impact

Private Region owners have the option to upgrade full Private Regions from 20,000 to 30,000 land impact. This option is only available for full Private Regions. Mainland regions, in addition to private Homestead and Openspace regions, are not eligible to upgrade land impact.

Pricing for land impact changes

The cost to upgrade a full Region to 30,000 prims is $30 USD per region at the time the upgrade is performed, plus an additional monthly maintenance fee of $10 USD per region. If a region's land impact is upgraded, you must maintain the upgraded status for at least one calendar month.

If you choose to downgrade a Private Region back to 20,000 prims, a charge of $30 USD per region applies at the time of the downgrade.

No pro-rating or discounts are permitted for any of the costs listed above.

Requesting land impact changes

To request an upgrade or downgrade of land impact, please submit a case through the portal on the Second Life website under the case type Land & Region > Land Impact Change Request.

Backing Up and Restoring Private Region Terrain

If you own a Private Region, you can back up your region's terraformed terrain to a texture file on your computer and use that file to restore your region's terrain to its saved shape. This is a great safety net in case you experience a terraforming accident, and it is also useful if you want to apply the same terrain to multiple regions you own.

To access the terrain backup and restore controls, choose World > Region/Estate in the Second Life Viewer®, and click the Terrain tab. Then:

To backup your terrain

1. Click Download RAW terrain.

2. A file browser dialog appears. Choose a location to save to and give your terrain file a specific name so it's easier to find.

3. Click Save.

4. Next, you see: "Terrain file written, starting download." The download process may take several minutes. Do not leave the region, and don't make any other terraforming changes until the download completes!

5. When the download completes, you see: "Finished download of raw terrain file to:" and the directory it was saved to.

6. Click Close.

To restore your terrain

1. Click Upload RAW terrain.

2. Select a .raw terrain file on your hard drive that you or someone else saved earlier.

3. Click Open (or Choose on Mac).

4. You see: "Upload started." It may take up to two minutes, depending on your connection speed.

5. When the upload is complete, you see: "Terrain upload done." The terrain changes to the contents of the .raw file.

If you would rather not terraform the region yourself, you can purchase terrains on Marketplace. You can upload these as described above to get great results fast.

Private Region Auto-saves and Restores (Rollbacks)

Note: We don't perform rollbacks on mainland regions.

All regions, including your estate, are automatically backed up at regular intervals throughout the day; we hold several days' worth of these backup states. This saves everything about your estate: the terrain, the land parcels, the builds, the textures and settings. The only things not saved are avatars themselves.

This means that under certain circumstances, your region can be rolled back to a previous state. In the event of an emergency, a region owner can request a rollback via the Concierge service. Performing a rollback can have serious consequences and should therefore not be thought of as an "Undo" feature on your estate; rather, it's a safety mechanism to be used only when something goes very badly wrong.

Rollbacks are performed at our discretion.

Requesting a rollback

Rollbacks must be requested via support ticket and can only be requested by the estate owner or estate manager.

Generally, regions can be rolled back a maximum of 72 hours before the original event; please be aware that we cannot roll back indefinitely. The longer you wait before requesting the rollback, the greater the chance that we will be unable to help you, so please make the request as soon as the problem occurs.

Please explain:

• What has happened.

• Why you need the rollback.

• Which region it is.

• Precisely how far back in time you need to go to repair the situation.

Tip: It helps if you provide the time in 24 hour format. Please use Pacific time (also called Second Life Time or SLT), not your local time.

If you are a region owner or a region estate manager, you can request a rollback by submitting a ticket through the Support Portal. Log in (if prompted) and choose Land & Region from the What type of problem are you having? dropdown menu. Specify Request a rollback in the second dropdown and fill out the form below.

Rollback requests are processed in the order they are received, with emergency requests taking precedent. Please note that rollbacks that are not time sensitive may take up to 2 business days to process.

Consequences of a Region Rollback

The backups taken are exact copies of the state of the region at the exact moment it was saved.

We cannot roll back inventory or avatars.

When we perform a rollback, we set the estate back to the exact state it was in when the backup was made. All changes — everything that has happened between the moment the save happened and now — are lost, undone or reset.

It is very important to understand what this means before you request a rollback. Some examples of unexpected consequences of a rollback include:

• People who are banned become unbanned for all parcels and the estate itself.

• People granted access suddenly find they are banned.

• Any land parcel changes are undone.

• Land sold or abandoned to tier down reverts to the prior owner, potentially pushing that person back over the new tier.

• Residents lose any land purchased after the backup, along with any content on that land.

• Recently edited parcel layouts revert to their prior form.

• Objects placed (rezzed) inworld after the backup are lost. No-copy objects are lost for good.

• Conversely, no-copy objects rezzed at the time of the backup but subsequently taken back into your Inventory reappear where they were.

Warning: Deliberate use of rollbacks to obtain additional copies of no-copy content can be considered abuse and is dealt with accordingly.

• Any changes to builds themselves are undone: textures are reverted and prims reset to the state they were in at the moment the backup was taken. This may mean that recent tenants lose their prefab or their furniture and that new sale items disappear.

• Any terraforming that has been done is undone and any recent changes to land textures are lost.

• Script changes to objects performed after the backup point are lost. Scripted vendors that updated with new content after the backup have those changes removed.

As you can see, rollbacks have significant repercussions and should only be requested when absolutely necessary.

Canceling a Private Region

If you no longer wish to own your private region, you have a couple of options:

• You may transfer ownership of the Private Region to another Resident. This requires both you and the buyer to enter support tickets with certain details about the transaction. See Transferring Private Regions for more details on the transfer process, cost, and timeframe.

• You may abandon your Private Region to Linden Lab. There is no fee to do so. No refunds will be given, and you will have the use of your region until the end of the current billing cycle. You need to notify the Concierge staff of your intention by submitting a ticket.

  1. Go to the Support Portal and click New Ticket Submission.

  2. In the Ticket Type dropdown, select Land and Region Issues.

  3. In the Region Request dropdown, select Region Cancellation Request.

  4. Fill out the requested details, and at the bottom, click Finish to submit the ticket.

You can see billing dates and fees for all of your Private Regions at the Land Portal. If your Private Region fees are invoiced, you can see the date your billing cycle ends by logging into your Netsuite account.

Note: If your next billing date falls within 5 business days of when you submit the ticket, please notify Concierge by phone or chat, so that you will not be billed automatically. Provide your ticket number in that conversation.

When your ticket is processed, you'll receive a response indicating that the region will be taken offline on its next billing date and that you will not be charged any further maintenance fees. Please pick up or return any content on the region; any inventory remaining after the billing date will be deleted.

Grandfathered Pricing

Some older regions have "grandfathered" or discounted pricing on their monthly maintenance fees. In February 2010, it was announced that these grandfathered maintenance fees would no longer be offered and that changing ownership or converting a grandfathered region would change its maintenance fee to the current monthly rate for its region type. As of November, 2015, you may now transfer grandfathered-priced Regions in accordance with the transfer pricing schedule.

We are unable to swap the price of a current grandfathered region with a non-grandfathered region. Grandfathered pricing stays with the region for the life of the region or until it is transferred or converted.

If a grandfathered region is abandoned and subsequently reactivated, its maintenance fee is updated to the current monthly rate for its region type.

Overview

Typically, when you install a new version of the Second Life Viewer, you can simply install over your existing version.  However, if you are experiencing problems, one of the first things to do is completely uninstall your current version and reinstall the same or a newer version.  Sometimes this is referred to as a clean install.

A clean install may help if there is an unusual issue affecting the Viewer user interface (UI), or if a Resident is having difficulty loading UI elements such as windows or menus. It can also be done to restore lost settings or return things to a default setup, if somehow the settings in the Viewer have changed or become unusuable. It doesn't usually hurt and can sometimes fix things that otherwise defy explanation.

If you're doing a reinstall to fix a problem, it's important to clear out temporary Second Life files (such as the cache) when reinstalling.

Backing up your user settings and preferences

One of the reasons to do a clean install of the Second Life Viewer is to fix problems that might be caused by user settings, but if you'd like to keep a backup of your current settings 'just in case', you can do that prior to your clean installation. Your user settings and preferences are saved in a local folder on your computer. This is how your viewer knows what preferences to use when it loads -- everything from your Graphics Preferences to your Privacy Settings are saved there. Before you do a clean install, you may wish to back-up these settings. Your text chat logs are also stored in a folder, which has the same name as your avatar, and if you'd like to save them, you can do so at the same time.

The first step is to locate your SecondLife directory (or folder). This is where your user_settings folder can be found, as well as your avatar name folder.

Finding your settings folder in Windows

The folder is usually located at C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming. If you install Second Life in a different location, the path is different. In any case, to get to the right place:

1. In Windows Explorer, click the Start Button.

2. In the search field (if visible), type %appdata% and press Enter ↵.

   • In Windows 10 & Windows 11, you can access the search field by clicking the Start Button and choosing Search, or by clicking the magnifying glass icon on the Task Bar

3. In the window that appears, open the SecondLife folder.

4. Inside the Second Life folder, right-click the user_settings folder and choose Copy

5. Navigate to a different folder (or directory such as Documents ) and click Paste. (You can also right-click on your Desktop and paste the folder there, which can make it easier to find later).

6. Repeat this process for your avatar name folder. Your folder will be named something like governor.linden. For simplicity, copy this folder to the same location you used for the user_settings folder.

Finding your settings folder on a Mac

By default, Mac OS X tends to keep the Library folder hidden. If you're having trouble, open Finder > Go and hold down the Option key; then click Library. From here, you can see the Application Support directory. The SecondLife folder is located inside.

1. The user_settings folder is located at: ~Library/Application Support/SecondLife

2. Inside the Second Life folder, right-click (or control-click) the user_settings folder and choose Copy

3. Navigate to a different folder (or directory such as Documents ) and right-click to Paste Item.

   • You can also right-click on your Desktop and paste the folder there, which can make it easier to find later.

4. Repeat this process for your avatar name folder. Your folder will be named something like governor.linden. For simplicity, copy this folder to the same location you used for the user_settings folder.

Procedure

Important Note: Be sure to backup your user settings and preferences before you uninstall, as uninstalling may delete all of your chat history and saved settings if you click the Yes button to remove registry keys and other files when prompted -- the Yes option is enabled by default, so it's easy to accidentally click. Backing up your user settings and chat history in a separate folder ensures they won't be lost by mistake. Better safe than sorry!

The procedure to use for a clean uninstall and reinstall depends on your operating system -- for a full guide on how to uninstall apps like Second Life from your computer, see the official website for your operating system:

• Windows 10

• Windows 11

  • For Windows 10 and Windows 11, if you'd like to keep your saved chat history and your user settings, be sure to click No to removing the registry keys and other files during the uninstallation process.

• Mac OS

Windows 10

For a more manual uninstall that fully clears out any saved folders that might be affecting your Second Life experience, you can delete system files directly in the Windows File Manager and reinstall with the following instructions:

1. Open C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local and delete the contents of the Second Life folder.

2. Open C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming and delete the contents of the Second Life folder.

3. Uninstall Second Life using the Apps and Features tool in Windows Settings.

4. Download and install the latest release of the Second Life Viewer from http://secondlife.com/support/downloads/.

If you can't see the files or folders described above in File Explorer:

1. In File Explorer, click the View tab.

2. Make sure the Hidden items checkbox is selected.

Windows 11

1. Open C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local and delete the contents of the Second Life folder.

2. Open C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming and delete the contents of the Second Life folder.

3. Use the Start > Settings  > Apps > Installed apps option to locate Second Life and uninstall it through Windows.

4. Download and install the latest release of the Second Life Viewer from http://secondlife.com/support/downloads/.

If you can't see the files or folders described above in File Explorer:

1. In File Explorer, click the View tab.

2. Make sure the Hidden items checkbox is selected.

Mac OS

1. Open Your Mac's Applications folder and find the Second Life Viewer Icon

2. Drag and Drop the Icon from the applications folder into the trash bin

   • You can also (⌘) CMD-Click (right click) and choose Move To Trash

3. In Finder, select Go from the top menu bar

4. Select the Library folder. If it's not visible on the Go menu list, hold the ALT key to make it visible.

5. Open ~/Library/Caches/SecondLife and move the contents of the folder to the Trash to complete uninstallation.

US Dollar balance

Note: As of August 1, 2019, your US Dollar balance is managed by Tilia, Second Life's trusted billing provider  For additional details about Tilia and how it interacts with your Second Life account, please see the Tilia FAQ. For information about the 2025 changes to the financial experience in Second Life, please see our introductory blog post.

All Second Life® accounts have both a Linden dollar balance and a US Dollar balance. You can see both balances in the Balances section of the Account Summary page, linked in the Account section of the left sidebar on the Account Dashboard at SecondLife.com.

Your US Dollar balance represents a positive account credit that can be used towards Second Life expenses (such as recurring subscription memberships or land fees) or that can be sent from your Second Life account to a real life payout account (such as PayPal). Many Residents operate businesses like shops, land rentals, or provide services to other Residents in exchange for Linden dollars. These Linden dollars can be sold to other Residents on the LindeX, and the proceeds of the sale will be added to your US Dollar account balance, minus any transaction fees.

Your account's Linden Dollar (L$) balance can be used to make purchases inworld, to send gifts or payments to other Residents, or shop on the Second Life Marketplace. For more information about Linden Dollars (L$), please see our knowledge base article Buying and Selling Linden Dollars.

Using your US Dollar balance

You can put your US Dollar balance to work in several ways, explained below.

Paying for Second Life expenses

When you pay your premium membership fee, land use fees, private estate fees, buy Linden dollars or buy a Private Region, Linden Lab charges your US Dollar balance by default, using credit you've accrued from selling Linden Dollars (L$) towards any charges sent to your account. If your US Dollar balance does not cover your expenses, all available US$ credit is applied to the fee first, then the remainder is charged to your preferred payment method. If you make enough Linden dollars, you can sell them on the LindeX to increase your US Dollar balance.

If you'd prefer to use a method of payment like a credit card or PayPal to pay for certain one-time purchases, you can de-select the Use your wallet balance option in the Choose your payment method section next to your USD Balance and expand the Other payment methods section below it to choose your preferred method of payment. This will charge the full amount of your purchase to your selected payment method. Your US Dollar balance will remain on your account for future use.

Payout (Process credit) withdrawals

Net proceeds from your sales of Linden Dollars remain as credit on your Second Life account, and this credit is automatically applied to your account fees as described above. If you do not wish to apply your Linden Dollar sales proceeds to your fees, you may withdraw this portion of your account credit through a real-world credit process. See our Process Credit page for more information. Please note that you may only process credit due to net proceeds from sales of Linden Dollars. Purchases of account credits and credits due to gift codes or other promotional account credits are nonrefundable, and may not be processed as a payment to you.

You must be in full compliance with the Second Life Terms of Service to receive any payment through the credit payment process. This includes, without limitation, the requirement to have accurate and complete registration information, including verifiable billing information. Under certain circumstances, Linden Lab may request additional information from you before processing a request. If provided in a timely manner, this extra step should not significantly delay processing times.

Process credits are also subject to economic limits unrelated to the maximum transaction amount. For more information about your account's economic limits, please see Economic Limits.

Additionally, you must be in compliance with Tilia's Terms of Service and provide Tilia with adequate documentation for ID verification in order to process credit. Tilia is a subsidiary of Linden Lab that offers certain financial services to the Second Life community and helps Second Life comply with U.S. laws and regulations. For additional information about Tilia and the documentation required for ID verification, please see the Tilia FAQ.

How can I withdraw USD credit from my account balance?

You may choose to send your US Dollar balance (also called a USD credit) to a payout method account, such as PayPal, through the payout interface provided by Tilia, Second Life's trusted billing provider. This is known as a process credit request or a payout, because you are requesting to process credit from the Second Life system to your real-world account (such as PayPal).

To request a payout (process credit), visit the Account Dashboard at secondlife.com, then under the Account options on the left side of the dashboard, select Payout (Process Credit) and click Request Process Credit. Follow the Tilia prompts to select a payout method to receive your payout at, such as your PayPal account, and to complete your payout request through the Tilia Payout interface. 

Requesting a payout has some requirements that must be met, such as a valid payout account option to receive your payout through Tilia, Second Life's trusted billing provider. Payout requests are subject to fees and minimum withdrawal amounts.

Selecting a payment method

When you request to process a credit from Second Life to your real-world account using the new system, you will be required to choose a valid receiving account as part of the payout request process through Tilia. If you haven't yet added a valid receiving account (such as a PayPal account) as a method of payment to your Second Life account yet, you may be asked to add one as part of the payout request process.

You may add a receiving account for payouts on the Payout (Process Credit) page by clicking Request Process Credit to open the Tilia payout interface, then selecting the Add payout account link located above the Payout Amount (USD) section and follow the instructions in the Tilia payout interface to add your preferred payout method.

Note: If you change your payment method, we may require additional information to verify your identity before we process the request. This verification is for your security.

Can I send funds to someone else's payout method account (such as PayPal)?

Process credit requests must be sent to a payout method account that you control. They are not meant to be used to pay someone else or to transfer funds to an account that you do not own.

Is there a minimum or maximum amount?

The minimum process credit amount allowed is $3, plus any applicable fees. The maximum amount per transaction for any account is $9,999 minus fees. If necessary, you can process a larger amount over multiple smaller transactions. 

Process credits are also subject to economic limits unrelated to the maximum transaction amount. For more information about your account's economic limits, please see Economic Limits.

Process credit fees

There is a fee per process credit transaction.  Fees are subtracted from the amount you enter in the form, so you will receive less than that amount in your PayPal or Skrill account. You can view the relevant fee amounts on the Transaction Fees and Payment Priority page.

How long does it take to process credits?

For processing a credit to a receiving account (such as PayPal), requests generally take between five to ten (5-10) business days (Monday-Friday, not including U.S. holidays) to be completed. Some requests may take longer (up to 30 days), per the Tilia Terms of Service (Section 4.3).

We always strive for quick turnaround; however, holidays and the volume of transactions may affect processing times. Also, in the event that Linden Lab or Tilia requires additional information from a Resident, the processing time will depend on the timely submission of the information by the Resident. Please be sure to have an updated account email address that you check regularly when you've submitted a process credit request so our payment specialists can contact you if necessary.

Business holidays in the US will extend the five to ten business day window by one day.

How can I check on my previous and pending requests?

To view a full history of your process credit transactions, see the Payout (Process Credit) History page. Any recent requests that have yet to be sent to to your receiving account will be listed on the Pending tab. If the request is listed on the Completed tab, but you haven't received funds in your receiving account, please contact Support for assistance.

Canceling a process credit request

If you think you've made a mistake and would like to cancel your requested payout, please check your Process Credit History. If your payout has not yet been processed, you may be able to cancel the request.

To see if a request is eligible to be canceled: 

• Visit the Payout (Process Credit) History page and click the Pending tab to load a list of your pending transactions.

• Click the pending transaction you'd like to cancel to open the Transaction Details

• Beneath the Status details, click the Cancel button, then click the Cancel Transaction link in the confirmation window

If you do not see a Cancel Transaction option, but your payout is still listed on the Pending tab of your Payouts (Process Credit) History page, please contact Support for assistance. You'll need to tell us which request is to be canceled (use the date/time and the amount to identify it). Please notify us as soon as you can, as we may or may not be able to manually cancel a request once the Cancel Transaction link is no longer available.

Process credit requests that are successfully canceled will be returned to your account's US Dollar balance.

Wire transfers

Sending money to Linden Lab

Linden Lab is not currently able to accept payment from your bank via wire transfer. Please pay for balances through a valid and accepted payment method, such as a credit card or PayPal. For more information about valid methods of payment, please see our Billing knowledge base article.

Receiving money from Linden Lab

Linden Lab is not currently able to support payment to your bank via wire transfer. If you wish to credit your USD balance to an external account, please do so through Tilia payout request system.

Land and other content in Second Life is rated  General,  Moderate, or  Adult. By default, new Residents aged 18 or older have access to General and Moderate content, and Residents aged 16 or 17 have access to General content. See Maturity ratings for more information about Second Life's rating system.

If you are 18 years or older, you may access adult content after enabling it in your viewer preferences.

How to change your preferences to view adult content

Even if you are 18 or older, you still need to opt in to view adult content. You also need to use Viewer version 1.23 or later to access the maturity preferences. Download the latest Viewer.

Tip: At the top of your Viewer, you can choose Help > About Second Life to check your Viewer version.

Log into Second Life, then follow these steps in the Viewer to set your maturity preferences:

1. Choose Me > Preferences (or Ctrl-P) and click the General tab.

2. Choose General, Moderate, Adult from the I want to access content rated: dropdown menu.

   

3. Click OK.

Congratulations! You may now visit any publicly accessible land in Second Life, regardless of its maturity rating.

Note: If your preferences are not set to allow adult content and you attempt to enter an adult-rated parcel or region, you receive a prompt allowing you to either cancel the teleport or instantly update your access preferences to General, Moderate, Adult.

Getting Payment Information on File

Landowners may also restrict access to their land to those with payment information on file with Linden Lab. If you have purchased Linden dollars (L$) or bought something on the Marketplace, you already have payment information on file.  

If you do not currently have payment information on file, or if you are unsure:

1. Log in to your Account page on the Second Life website.

2. Select Billing Information under the Account section on the left side of the page.

3. Select Add a New Payment Method in the Payment Methods section.

4. Follow the prompts in the Second Life Cashier Tilia widget to add your payment method of choice.

Until you've completed a transaction with Second Life, your in-world profile may not display that you have payment method on your account. Once you've completed one transaction, this setting should update. If you're having difficulty accessing content restricted inside Second Life to Residents with payment information on file, be sure that your profile (Me > Profile) shows the Payment Information Used indicator.

Note: Linden Lab only accepts PayPal payments through Verified PayPal accounts. Please check your PayPal Account Overview page or review the PayPal support documentation to ensure your account is a Verified PayPal account.

In Second Life, you have:

• A username, your unique Second Life account name that you choose when you register your account. Residents can opt to change their username for a fee, should they wish. See Changing usernames for more information.

• A display name shown to others inworld and on your profile.  You can change your display name as often as once a week at no cost.  In addition, you can always reset it to its default, your username.

Your username and your display name are totally separate.  If you haven't set a display name, then it defaults to your username.

Usernames

Your username is the unique account name or account ID you use to log into Second Life. By default, it appears above your avatar inworld and identifies you to other Second Life Residents. You can also set a display name that appears above your username.

Username format and account age

In 2010, Second Life changed from registering new accounts with a "first name" and "last name" to a single-word username  If you registered your account after mid-2010, you created a unique, single-word username; for example: mortimer1980, or jsmith57.  When you log in to Second Life, you simply enter the  username you selected when you registered. 

If you created your Second Life account before mid-2010, you have a Second Life "first name" and "last name" that determine your username as follows: firstname.lastname.  For example, if your Second Life name was originally Joe Smith when you joined, your username is joe.smith.

Your username is a unique and personal account identifier in Second Life, and as such, many systems within Second Life depend on it. Changing a username is difficult, and as such, can only be done through a fee-based web service. See Changing usernames for more information.

However, you can change your display name as often as once a week. There are no fees associated with changing your display name.  Your display name appears above your username by default and is a flexible way to identify yourself to other Second Life Residents.

Logging in with your username

The official Second Life Viewer requires a single username. However, some third-party viewers still have fields for a first name and a last name.

Using a Viewer with separate first and last Name login fields

If you are a newer Second Life Resident with a single-word username:

1. Enter your username in the First Name field.

2. Enter Resident in the Last Name field.

For example, if your username is thejoesmith, enter: 

First Name: thejoesmith  Last Name: Resident

If you are a longtime Second Life Resident with both a first and last name, simply enter your first name and last name in the corresponding fields.

For example, if your Second Life name is Joe Smith, enter:

First Name: Joe  Last Name: Smith

Using a Viewer with a single name login field

If you are a Second Life Resident with a single-word username, simply enter that username along with your password and log in as usual.

If you are an older Second Life Resident who has a first and last name, you have two options:

• Enter your first and last name (in lowercase, separated by a period) into the field provided OR

• Enter your first and last name separated by a space (case does not matter).

For example, if your SL name is David Dearheart:
Username:

• david.dearheart
  OR 

• david dearheart
  OR 

• David Dearheart

Then enter your password into the Password field and log in.

Showing or hiding others' usernames

You can't control the display of your username to other Residents, but you can control whether you see others' usernames and whether you see your own name.

To show or hide usernames inworld, both above other avatars and in chat:

1. Log into Second Life.

2. Choose Me > Preferences from the top menu.

3. Click the General tab.

4. Select the Usernames checkbox. If the box is checked, usernames are shown. If the box is not checked, usernames are hidden.

5. Click OK.

A club scene showing usernames and display names is illustrated at left.  In this image, some usernames are blurred.  Notice that only the username is shown above avatars who haven't set a display name.

Changing usernames

For a fee, Residents may change their usernames permanently. Changing your username will update your login information, unlike a Display Name.

To change your username using the Account Dashboard at SecondLife.com:

• First, log out of the Second Life Viewer on the account whose name you'd like to change.

  • Be sure to log out of every viewer completely. You cannot change your username if you're inworld.

• Visit the Account Dashboard at SecondLife.com and log in, if necessary.

• On the left, click Account to open the Account submenu.

• Click Change Name.

• Review the fees:

  • Premium Plus members: USD $14.99

  • Premium members: USD $34.99

  • Basic & Plus members: USD $49.99

• Select from:

  • Go back to one of your previous names > Next Step

  • Choose a new name > Next Step

• If you do not want to change your first name, uncheck the box next to Change first name and continue to the Change last name section.

• To change your first name: 

  • Make sure the box next to Change first name is checked. 

  • Enter your new first name in the New first name box.

  • If you only wish to change your first name, uncheck the box next to Change last name, then click Review Changes to continue.

• To change your last name:

  • Make sure the box next to Change last name is checked.

  • Select a last name from the pool of available options.

    • Different last names will be available at different times. Once a last name is removed from the list, it is not made available again.

    • Once you have used a last name, it will remain available for you even if it's removed from the general list of available names.

  • Available names you've used before will appear in the list beneath the current list of publicly available names.

• Once you've made your selections, click Review Changes.

• Review your requested account name change. Please make sure everything looks perfect, including spelling and capitalization.

• Once you're satisfied, click Continue to checkout

• Continue through checkout process to pay for your new name.

• Once your name change is complete, you'll receive a success notification in your web browser and an email confirming your account name has changed. 

Fees and guidelines

Account Types & Fees

Premium Plus: USD $14.99

Premium: USD $34.99

Plus: USD $49.99

Basic: USD $49.99

Guidelines

• You may choose to change your first name, your last name, or both.

• If your last name is currently Resident, you may select a 'classic' last name from several available options.

• If you've changed your name before, you may revert to your previous name (standard name change fee applies)

• Usernames must fit the guidelines of the Terms of Service for account names.

• Accounts with a Custom Last Name must contact customer support for assistance; the web portal will not permit custom last name changes.

• Names are limited to 31 characters in length.

• If you've made a typo or mistake on your name change, please contact customer support for assistance.

FAQs and troubleshooting

Can I pay for my name change in Linden dollars (L$)?

No. Username changes are charged in USD (United States Dollars). If you have a credit on your Tilia Account Balance from selling Linden dollars (L$), this credit can be used towards a name change, though. For more information on how to use your account balance in Second Life, please see our Knowledge Base article.

How often can I change my username?

There is no limit on how often you can change your username, but the standard fee will apply each time you do. 

Help! I made a typo when I changed my name. How can I fix it?

If you've made a mistake or typo in your username, please contact our customer support team for assistance.

Known Issues

• Your user history at wiki.secondlife.com will not carry over to your new username; any edits or content you may have added there will display the username you used at the time of the edit.

• Your chat logs and user settings folders, located on your computer, may not automatically carry over. The viewer will make new folders with your updated name. If you'd like to copy your user settings, please see our guide to Backing up your user settings and preferences.

• If you have a display name set, and choose to change your username, your display name will not change automatically. Please update it if you'd like to make any changes to reflect your new username.

For further assistance and questions regarding name changes, please see our Name Change FAQ or contact our Support team for help.

Display names

Your display name is:

• A name you choose shown to other avatars in the Second Life virtual world.

• A string of characters up to 31 characters long  that contains at least one alphanumeric character. It can include most Unicode script characters, spaces, and some punctuation.

• Distinct from the username you use to log in. 

• Not necessarily unique; other avatars may have the same display name as you.

You can choose whether or not to show other Residents' display names and usernames inworld. If you choose to view display names or usernames, they appear in the name tags above every avatar and in chat.

Allowed characters

Please note that using ansi or 'fancy' text characters may or may not apply your chosen display name correctly, and in some instances will fail to update, leaving your display name unchanged, depending on the type of character used. The standard characters A-Z, 0-9, and the characters listed below are tested and will display correctly. In addition to letters and numbers, you can use the following characters in your display name:

• ' (apostrophe)

• - (hyphen-minus)

• . (full stop)

• : (colon)

• · (middle dot)

• ֊ ֊  (Armenian hyphen)

• ׳ (Hebrew geresh)

• ״ (Hebrew gershayim)

• ་ (Tibetan tsheg)

• - (hyphen)

• ’ (right single quotation mark)

• ‧ (hyphenation point)

• = (katakana-hiragana double hyphen)

• · (katakana middle dot)

Setting or changing your display name

You can change your display name once every seven days, but you can Reset it at any time, which makes it appear as your "classic" Second Life first name and last name, or your username.

To set or change your display name:

1. Log into Second Life.

2. In the Second Life Viewer, click Me > Profile... or  in the toolbar.

3. Click Edit Profile.

4. Click Display Name.

5. Type the desired display name in the field under New Display Name.

6. Type the name again to confirm.

7. Click Save.

Note: Changes to your display name may take up to 24 hours to propagate  throughout all of Second Life's systems.

Showing or hiding others' display names

To show or hide display names inworld, both in chat and over all avatars:

1. Log into Second Life.

2. Choose Me > Preferences from the top menu.

3. Click the General tab.

4. Select the View Display Names checkbox. If the box is checked, display names are shown. If the box is unchecked, display names are hidden.

5. Click OK.

Information for content creators and merchants

Both username and display name are visible on objects

Object properties and build tools show both the username and the display name of an object's owner and creator. During Linden dollar and other transactions, both your username and display name are visible.

Display names on objects change when you change your display name, although it may take up to one day for the change to appear everywhere. 

Username is shown in transaction history

Your transaction history shows only usernames for both buyers and sellers.

Search covers both usernames and display names

When you search for a Resident, search results contain both display names and usernames so that you can easily determine which John Smith you're really looking for.

If customers know your username, don't set your display name to avoid confusion

To emphasize your username, don't set your display name; this way your display name and username match. As a precaution, you may also advise your customers that they should only pay avatars/objects matching your username.

LSL uses only "full name" derived from username

LSL functions return the "full name". For example:

• Username: kelly.linden

• Full name: Kelly Linden

• Display Name: Teh Kellz

For more information, see LSL Avatar/Name in the Second Life Wiki.

Adding someone to your Friends list

There are several ways to add a friend:

• If you are near the person inworld, just right-click their avatar and select Add Friend.

• If you are not nearby or if the person is offline, click the People button at the bottom of the Viewer window and select the FRIENDS tab. Then click the + button to open a search window and type in your friend's name.

When you add a friend, the Add Friend window enables you to enter a custom message. Use this space to explain why you would like to be friends, or to remind the person how you know each other.

Once a friendship offer is accepted, your names appear in each other's FRIENDS lists. All friendships are bidirectional, so if you delete a friend, you no longer appear in that friend's list.

How to accept or decline a friendship offer

When another Resident offers friendship to you, a dialog appears in the upper-right corner of your screen.  The dialog also appears in the Conversations window as an instant message from the sender.

If you click Accept, your new friend receives an onscreen notification that you accepted the friendship offer.

Click Decline to cancel the offer.  The other person receives onscreen notification that you declined the friendship offer.

Friendship etiquette

Completing your profile and reading other Residents' profiles provides ample opportunity for conversation. If you get along well, feel free to offer friendship.

For unofficial Resident tips about socializing and making friends, see SLetiquette.

Partnering

Second Life couples can make their relationships official. Whether you're married or just connected, you can designate your partner on your profile inworld and make your relationship visible to the rest of the community.

Note: Creating a partnership costs each partner L$10.

Partnership is a vanity display for social purposes only. It does not alter inworld permissions, group abilities, support benefits, and so forth. For example, if you are on a Premium account and your partner is on a Basic account, he or she does not receive any Premium benefits.

Partnering also does not affect your Second Life username. Nor does it entitle you to share your partner's Second Life account. For more information on our policies regarding sharing accounts, see Permitting Others to Access or Transferring Second Life Accounts.

How to make someone your partner

To make someone your partner, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Partners page.

2. Enter your Partner's username.

3. Type in your Proposal to your to-be partner. It can be a love letter, song lyrics, or whatever suits the both of you best.

4. Click Send Proposal.

   

Your potential partner is notified at the email address linked with their Second Life account. He or she has seven days to accept. Once the proposal is accepted, your names appear in one another's profiles.  

The partnership email should be received in seconds. Please check your spam folder and other email filters to make sure it isn't being hidden.

If you receive a partnership request you wish to decline, you can do so on the Partners page.

How to end a partnership

The person who initiates the "divorce" is charged L$25.

Follow this procedure to dissolve a partnership:

1. Open the Partners page.

2. Select "I, (your name), would like to dissolve my partnership with (your partner's name)."

3. Click Submit.
   Your partnership is dissolved and your now-ex-partner is notified.

Once you have dissolved a partnership, you can recreate it by following the procedure previously outlined and paying the L$10 again. 

Partnership history

Your Viewer profile does not show you the date you started your partnership, so keep your original partnership request (sent via email) if you wish to have a record of the date.

Letting friends edit your objects

There are two ways to enable a friend to edit your objects in Second Life. This is often referred to as collaborative building or collaborative creation. It's a useful way to let groups of people collaborate on a building project together.

The method you choose depends on whether your collaborator is in a group or whether he or she is your friend.

The group method

To enable a member of a group you are in to edit your objects:

1. Right-click the object and choose Edit.
   The object editor opens.

2. Click on the General tab in the editor. If you can't see the tabs, click on More.

3. Click on the Tool icon to the right of Group and assign the object to the group your friend is in.

4. Click OK.

5. Select the checkbox next to Share.

Any other group members will also be able to edit the object. Group members can only edit objects that are shared with the group.

Note: If you want other group members to be able to take copies of your object, make sure you set the next owner permissions (Copy, Modify, Resell/Give away) appropriately.

The friend method

To enable a friend to edit your objects:

1. Click  in the toolbar.
   The PEOPLE window opens.

2. Click the FRIENDS tab to open your friends list.

3. Mouse over your friend's name and click to view your friend's profile.

4. In the profile page that appears, click  and choose Permissions.

5. Under Allow (friend's name) to:  select Edit, delete or take my objects.

6. Click Save.

Important: Doing this gives your friend the same rights that you have to edit all of your objects. Be careful with this permission!

To enable a friend to edit your objects at my.secondlife.com:

1. Go to my.secondlife.com in a web browser.
   Log in to your Second Life account, if necessary.

2. Click the PEOPLE tab to open your friends list.

3. Locate the friend you'd like to grant permissions to in the list and click the gear icon . Choose Permissions.

4. Under Allow (friend's name) to:  select Edit, delete or take my objects.

5. Click Save.

A few things to note

There are a few things you should be aware of:

• Your collaborative partners can only edit objects you've rezzed. Nobody but you will ever have access to your inventory, so if you want someone else to edit an object that you own, you need to rez it inworld first.

• Your collaborative partners can't edit the next-owner permissions on an object they've been granted access to.

• It isn't technically possible to link two objects together if they have different owners, even if the owners have given each other edit permissions.

• Your collaborative partners cannot edit your objects if they have Select Only My Objects enabled under Build > Options in the top menu bar.

• How to build a mirror
• Troubleshooting
  • Help! I'm not seeing any reflections!
  • I don't see my avatar in the reflection. 
  • Can mirror probes be curved?
  • I've created multiple mirrors and they aren’t reflecting as expected.
  • The mirror isn’t reflecting after relogging.

How to build a mirror

This tutorial will guide you to create a basic planar (or flat) mirror. To make a simple mirror, we need two objects – the shiny reflective surface itself, and a reflection probe which acts as the source of the image reflected on our surface.

Be warned that mirrors are very performance heavy. Using mirrors is typically only recommended on decent hardware, and you might wish to save a Graphics Preset option that disables mirrors when you're not in an environment where you need to see them (such as a busy shopping event). By default, the Low graphics setting has all reflections disabled, so if your system is set to use Low graphics you will need to manually enable the options below in order to view mirrors.

Because we'll be working with reflection probes as we make our mirror, it's a good idea to enable the “Select Reflection Probes” setting in Build > Options section of the top menu. This will let you easily click your reflection probe once it's made so you can make adjustments to its position and settings.

The following options will need to be set in Preferences > Graphics > Advanced Settings: Reflection Coverage - Set to anything but None Mirrors - Ensure this is checked

Building your mirror

To build your mirror, you'll need a space inside Second Life where you have permission to build objects. This can be land that you own, land belonging to a group you're a member of, or a public sandbox where any Resident can work on building projects for a short time. Let's get started!

• Use the Build tool (Build > Build or Control-B) to create a cube and set its dimensions to the size you’d like your mirror to be - this will be our reflective surface, so let's give it a name like "Mirror Surface".
• Apply a shiny texture to the mirror surface object. If you have a shiny mirror material already, you can drag and drop your material from inventory onto the surface of our new mirror cube, or use the Texture tab of the Build floater to set the texture of the object to a shiny material.
  • If you don't already have a shiny material that you'd like to use, you can use the Shiny Material available in the Library > Materials folder of your inventory, or you can follow the steps in the How to Create a Shiny Material expandable section below to create your own.
    • How to Create a Shiny Material

      Open your Inventory (Me > Inventory or Control-I) Click the + icon found in the top-right corner and select New Material
      Let’s call this new material: “Shiny Material” for now:
      Right-click the new material and select Open. You’ll see a customization window similar to the image to the right: In the Metallic-Roughness section, set the Roughness Factor to 0 This will set the material to be 100% metal and 0% rough to achieve maximum shininess! Leave all of the other options unchanged and click Save at the bottom of the pop-up.   That’s it! You’ve now made a shiny material! By default, your newly made material will be stored in your Inventory > Materials folder. Continue with the remaining steps to create a mirror and don’t forget to apply your new shiny material to your mirror surface object.

Use the Build tool to create a second cube. This is going to be the reflection probe for the mirror, so let's call it “Mirror probe”. In the Build Tools floater window for the mirror probe object, select the Features tab  Check the Reflection Probe checkbox near the bottom Please note, your probe object may suddenly become a sphere when this setting is checked - that's normal, and will be fixed in a few steps when we set the Probe Update setting.
You may be given a prompt that outlines what is happening to your prim when this is checked. Click OK to continue if you do. You may also see another warning about reflection probes needing a special setting to be enable in order to select the probe to edit it. While you're working on your mirror, be sure to enable the “Select Reflection Probes” setting in the menu bar Build > Options section in order to reselect it.
In the Build Tool menu for your mirror probe object, on the bottom of the Features tab, set the Probe Update setting to one of the Mirror options: Mirror (Environment): Only reflects the environment and objects  Mirror (Everything): Reflects everything including avatars and particles Your reflection probe will now transform back into a cube and may now provide a somewhat odd reflection. It is important to note that Mirror probes only reflect planar surfaces from its Z-axis, which in most viewers is indicated by the dark blue arrow when an object is selected. To reflect onto our mirror surface correctly, we need the dark blue arrow (Z-Axis) to point away from the mirror surface perpendicularly. Some rotation is required that will be performed in the next steps. Move your mirror probe so that the center of it is as close as possible to the surface of your mirror object.
Ensure Snap is checked in the Build Too options at the top of the Build tool window, and set its drop-down setting to Local.
Rotate the mirror probe so that the dark blue Z-axis arrow is pointing away from the shiny surface. With the mirror probe object selected, make sure you can tell which way the blue arrow is pointing. In the example GIF on the right, the blue arrow is pointing up. Switch to Rotate mode and use the rotation tool to spin your mirror probe object so that the blue arrow points away from the shiny mirror surface. In the example GIF, this means rotating the mirror probe on the green axis/circle, spinning it 90 degrees clockwise.
Adjust the dimensions of the mirror to make up your wanted reflection size. In the example to the right, the mirror probe has been made taller and wider than the surface of the mirror (as indicated by the yellow outline box). This helps reduce blurriness or fading at the edges of the reflection. Don’t forget to keep the center of the "mirror probe" object near the shiny surface to minimize distortions of your reflection! Once you're happy with the size of your mirror and the clarity of the reflection, be sure to link the "mirror probe" and "mirror surface" objects together using the Build tool. For more information about linking objects, check out Linking Objects in the Build Tools knowledge base article for more information. Generally, it's best to click the mirror probe object first, then hold down the Shift key and click the mirror surface object. Then select Build > Link. This will link the two objects together, with the shiny mirror as the root (or named) object.
You now have a mirror! Congratulations!

Want to improve the reflection quality?

Settings for changing the resolution and update rate of mirrors can be found in Advanced Graphics Preferences. Please note that selecting higher settings will likely degrade your viewer performance. If you find that your viewer performance is slow with Mirrors enabled, you may wish to create a graphics preset to easily switch between having mirrors enabled and having them disabled, for busy areas or times when it's important to have faster viewer performance.

Want to know more about reflection probes and the new shiny PBR materials? Check out https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/PBR_Materials for details and technical information about how PBR materials work.

Troubleshooting

Help! I'm not seeing any reflections!

Please be sure to check the following:

• The shiny surface material used on your mirror object has a Roughness value lower than 0.05
• The Mirrors checkbox is enabled in Me > Preferences > Graphics > Advanced Settings
• The Reflection Coverage setting is set to Manual only, Manual + terrain, or Full scene on the Me > Preferences > Graphics > Advanced Settings menu

I don't see my avatar in the reflection.

Be sure to have the Advanced setting: Reflection Detail set to either Static+Dynamic or (the performance heavy) Realtime. 

Another possible cause for an avatar not appearing in the mirror's reflection is that the Probe Update setting for your mirror probe might be set to Mirror (Environment), rather than Mirror (Everything) in the Build Tool.

Can mirror probes be curved?

Unfortunately, mirror probes can only be planar (flat). Switching the prim shape to something other than a cube will not change the shape of the mirror probe.

I've created multiple mirrors and they aren't reflecting as expected.

Only one mirror reflection can be displayed at a time. The mirror selected is determined by the camera position.

I relogged and now my mirror isn't reflecting correctly.

There is currently a bug where this may occur. Until a fix is released, one quick workaround is to toggle the Mirrors setting in Advanced Graphics Preferences by unchecking the Graphics > Advanced Settings > Mirrors option, then re-enabling it again.

Some older Regions have "grandfathered" or discounted pricing on their monthly maintenance fees. In 2010, we raised the maintenance fees of private Regions to match the increased costs of newer and more powerful server hardware to run new Regions, but allowed existing Region owners to continue paying the original lower monthly rate. While grandfathered pricing was originally a bonus for existing Region owners in 2010, there are options available for those who wish to obtain a grandfathered Region by other means.

Obtaining grandfathered pricing

Many grandfathered Regions were obtained before February 2010 and have simply retained their original pricing. However, there are ways to obtain a Region with grandfathered pricing, such as a Region transfer or special promotional offer.

Region transfers

As of November, 2015, you may transfer grandfathered-priced Regions in accordance with the transfer pricing schedule. This means that if a region has existing grandfathered pricing and the current owner wishes to transfer it, the buyer may opt to pay a higher transfer fee to retain the grandfathered pricing if they wish.

We are unable to swap the price of a current grandfathered Region with a non-grandfathered Region. Grandfathered pricing stays with the specific region for the life of the Region or until it is transferred or converted into a different region type (such as a homestead).

If you're interested in purchasing a grandfathered region from another Resident, you can contact our Support team to confirm the region's billing date and its monthly maintenance fee.

If a grandfathered Region is abandoned and subsequently reactivated, its maintenance fee is updated to the current monthly rate for its Region type.

Limited-time "buy down" event

For a limited time in 2016, we offered a chance to "buy down" the maintenance fees on your existing Regions. By paying a one-time fee, you could take advantage of grandfathered maintenance rates for the lifetime of your Region.

Private Regions overview

Private Regions are regions in Second Life that are directly paid for and controlled by a Resident. 

In general, Private Region ownership is an excellent choice for Residents who:

• Wish to enjoy land ownership separate from the ever-changing Second Life mainland.

• Want to build and control a Second Life experience with or without adjacent neighbors.

• Require more land controls than those provided on the mainland.

• Want to name the region their land is in (within the naming guidelines).

Estates versus Private Regions

An estate is an administrative container for regions, much like a country in real life controls a specific piece of land or territory. Estates can have as few as one region or as many as thousands of regions within them. The main advantage to having many regions in the same estate is to allow the same group of Estate Managers to have administrative power in them, like controlling ban lists, managing parcels, or adjusting settings.

Estates having control over regions is similar to the idea of a country controlling different land areas in real life. In some ways, estates act like a country's government and control the land regions inside the country's possession. Some countries have many regions in them (like America with its states, or France's administrative régions), while other countries are small and have only one region in them.

• For example, Barbados is a single island (region) that is also a country (estate).

• Compare that to Indonesia, which is made up of 17,504 islands (regions) in a single country (estate).

• In these examples, the islands in the countries share common laws, currency, and government officials -- much like the different regions in an estate share an owner, estate managers, and selected settings like access.

Other important notes about estates:

• A Resident can own many estates.

• An estate can never have less than one region.

• All regions in the same estate share the same owner; ownership (and who pays for the region maintenance) is always determined by the estate a region is in.

Regions in the same estate share certain common settings, including but not limited to:

• Ban lists

• Estate managers

Region Maintenance Fees

Private region maintenance is charged on a monthly basis (except in the case of some special regions, like educator or non-profit regions operated by schools, charities or businesses). The region's maintenance fee is automatically charged to your account much like a Premium membership would be.

To check when your private region maintenance fee will be charged to your account, visit secondlife.com and log in to your account.

• On the default Account Dashboard page, click the Land Manager link in the left column.

• Select My Regions

• Click on the Estate name for the region you'd like to review

• Your region's next billing date will be listed next to the region name

If you have a positive Tilia Account credit from selling Linden Dollars or other transactions, your region maintenance fee will be deducted from your account credit. Any remaining balance due will be charged to the method of payment on file that you've selected for recurring fees.

For more information about associating payment methods with different types of Second Life transactions, please see our Billing article.

Region maintenance fees by type

The setup fee for a new region includes its first month of maintenance fees. Event Region Pro and Event Region Elite regions have no setup fee, but for new regions the first monthly maintenance fee will be charged on region creation. Existing regions that are upgraded to an Event Pro or Event Elite region will bill at the new monthly maintenance rate on their next regular billing day.

Skill gaming regions are available to approved Skill Gaming Operators only. See Skill Gaming regions for more information.

You may also choose to convert one or more of your Private Regions into multiple Openspaces or Homesteads, or you may choose to convert some of your Openspaces or Homesteads to different region types. After any conversion, you must always have at least one standard Private Region remaining. For full details on converting between different region types, see Converting Private Regions.

Private Region types

Undeveloped regions are delivered completely empty of objects and ready to be built and shaped to your liking. 

The table below explains some of the different types of Private Regions available for purchase in the Second Life® virtual world.

In addition to the standard types below, there are also specialized region types available for events and skill gaming.

Additional types of Private Regions

In addition to standard Full Private Regions, existing region owners (and Premium Plus members, for a single homestead region specifically) may purchase other types of regions designed for specific types of activity and usage: event regions, skill gaming regions, homestead regions, and openspace regions.

• Event Regions

• Skill gaming regions

• Homestead regions 

• Openspace regions

Event Regions

Event Regions are a special type of region with extra capacity for both visitors and objects, depending on the package chosen, as well as other benefits specifically aimed at making large gatherings of avatars possible. To make this additional capacity possible, Event Regions run on a special hardware configuration.

Event Regions are available in two configurations, Event Region Pro and Event Region Elite.

Event Region Pro

The Pro configuration for Event Regions offers support for larger groups of avatars to be present in the region simultaneously with more capacity for scripts and an optional extended chat range to allow for all visitors to take part in events without the need to crowd into a smaller space. Additional services for special events (including an increase in land impact capacity and cloning of event regions) are available as a separate fee if desired.

Existing full regions can be upgraded to an Event Region Pro with no additional setup fee; the monthly maintenance fee for the selected region would increase to USD$449 on its next monthly billing.

Event Region Pro Specifications

• Land impact capacity: 20,000 (upgradeable)

• Avatar Limit: 175

• Extended chat range (on request)

• Available Cloning of Event Region - USD $50

  • 100% original content only

• Price: USD $449 per month

  • No additional setup fee required; for new regions, the monthly maintenance of USD$449 is charged when the region is created

Event Region Elite

The Elite configuration for Event Regions includes the features of Event Region Pro but adds additional services as an all-inclusive option, for those who operate frequently recurring high profile events that require more active maintenance than an Event Pro Region configuration allows.

Event Region Elite Specifications

• Land impact capacity: 30,000

• Avatar Limit: 175

• Extended chat range (on request)

• Event Region Cloning (100% original content only)

• No fees for Region Rollbacks

• Price: USD $599 per month

  • No additional setup fee required; for new regions, the monthly maintenance of USD$599 is charged when the region is created

Ordering an Event Region

To order an Event Region, please submit a request via our support ticket system. Be sure to log in to your Second Life account when making the ticket in order to have the correct options available.

On the Submit a Support Ticket page:

• Select Land & Region > Order Events Region

• Please include which configuration you would like for your region, Event Region Pro or Event Region Elite, as well as your preferred region name and location if you have the information available

Skill gaming regions

Skill gaming regions are regions specifically permitted to host approved skill gaming machines. They can only be purchased and owned by approved skill gaming operators. Please see the Skill Gaming FAQ for more information on skill gaming regions.

Skill gaming regions pricing

• The setup fee for a new skill gaming region is USD$600

  • This includes the first month of region maintenance (USD$345)

• Skill Gaming Regions (Standard Full): USD$345 per month

• Skill Gaming Regions (Upgraded 30k Capacity): USD$375 per month

• Skill Gaming Elite regions: USD$599 per month

  • Skill Gaming Elite regions have an increased avatar limit of 175 and an increased land impact of 30,000 included.

  • Upgrading an existing Skill Gaming region to a Skill Gaming Elite region costs $99 USD (the difference between the setup fees).

Homestead Regions

A Homestead is a type of Private Region intended for such purposes as:

• Low-density rentals

• Light commercial use

• Quiet residential use

Other specifications for Homesteads include:

• Available to full region owners only

• Premium Plus members may own one homestead without also owning a full region

• Lower price than a full region

• Events and classifieds are permitted

• Comes with lower usage limits than full regions:

  • Land capacity set at 5000

  • Concurrent avatar limit set at 20

Pricing for Homesteads is as follows:

• Setup fee of $149

• Monthly fee of $109

 Homesteads are approved for rental use within the Region limitations we have set.

Openspace Regions

Openspace Regions are a type of Private Region intended for light use such as water, hills, or forest. They are not intended for building, home rentals, or events. To own an Openspace Region, you must also own a Full Private Region.

Openspace specifications include:

• Available to full region owners only

• Lower price than a full region or Homestead

• Events and classifieds are not permitted

• Comes with lower usage limits than full regions or Homesteads:

  • Land capacity set at 1000

  • Concurrent avatar limit set at 10

Pricing for Openspaces is as follows:

• New Openspace regions are available by support ticket only.

• Monthly fee of $60

Buying Private Regions

There are several ways to purchase a private region. The quickest and easiest method is to purchase a new region from our online land store, which will automatically deliver your newly purchased region right away. Existing regions can also be purchased from other Residents, who may choose to transfer their region or estate to a new owner via the support ticket process at the Support Portal. 

Private Regions for Non-Profit and Educators

Educators and non-profit institutions may be eligible to purchase private regions at a discount. For more information, please see Information for educators and the Education and Non-Profit Discount Terms and Conditions.

Purchasing from the land store

Before purchasing a new region from the land store, there are a few important notes to consider:

• To purchase land from the Land Store, you must have billing information on file.  Add billing information on your billing information page.

• You can only purchase a Homestead region through the Land Store if you own or are also going to buy one or more full regions. 

  • Educators & non-profits have a separate purchasing website -- see Information for educators for more information.

  • Premium Plus members who would like to purchase a single homestead without also owning a full region may do so by contacting our Support Team.

• Orders totaling more than US $10,000 can't be processed through the Land Store. If you're planning on buying more than US $10,000 worth of land, consider making multiple orders.

• You may have up to 10 items in your cart at once. Items don't stay in your cart forever; they stay in your cart until you or someone else buys them. A region is held as yours for 30 minutes after your last activity in the Land Store. If someone else buys it (or a neighboring region) after those 30 minutes have elapsed, it will appear in your cart as unavailable.

• Be sure your preferred region name meets the guidelines for naming private regions

When you're ready, here's how to purchase your private region at the Land Store:

1. Log into the Second Life Land Portal.

2. Click Buy an Undeveloped Private Region. If you don't need the amount of control and space that comes with a region, you can choose to Buy Mainland.

3. You are presented with thumbnail images and descriptions of several appealing choices. These are all starting points for your creative vision, and you can always reshape your land later. 

4. Click Continue to proceed.

5. Use the comparison details on the "Land Detail" page to decide whether you want a Full Region or Homestead. Click Choose under your selection to continue.

6. On the "Name your land" page, type a name in the Create a Region Name field and click Check Availability. If your selected name is not taken, you can proceed.

7. Region Coordinates are automatically filled in; these coordinates are where your Region will be physically located on the World Map. If you'd prefer to override them, click [change], then click a map square that isn't crossed out in red. You can click the arrow buttons to look at different areas on the map. You can also search for another region to be near (for example, one that a friend or colleague owns -- see Ordering adjacent regions for how that works)

8. Select answers to the survey questions -- if you're not sure or prefer not to answer, the Other option is available.

9. Click the Add to Cart button.

10. Once all details have been successfully verified, you can shop for more regions (same steps as above) or click Proceed to Checkout.

11. A summary of your region order will appear on the next page. Click Place Order to confirm your purchase.

Delivery

Once your region purchase is complete, you receive an email with the details. A new region is generally delivered within 15 minutes. Occasional service updates may affect that time, so see the Second Life Grid Status Reports page if it's taking longer than expected. You're also welcome to contact the Concierge support team at the Support Portal during business hours to check on your new region's progress.

Purchasing a private region from another Resident via region transfer

If you're interested in purchasing an existing region from another Resident, you may be able to do so by completing a region transfer through support tickets at the Support Portal. When you've found someone who wishes to sell their private region, both the buyer and seller come to an agreement on the sales price and submit tickets to initiate the transfer. Please see Transferring Private Regions for more information on this process.

If you already own a private region, and are interested in selling it to another Resident, this may also be possible. Please see Transferring Private Regions for more information.

Maturity ratings

New regions are delivered with a default maturity rating of Moderate. You can customize this using the Region/Estate tools:

1. From the Viewer menus, go to World > Place Profile > Region/Estate.

2. Click the Region tab.

3. From the Rating dropdown, select either or Adult.

4. Click Apply.

Note: If your region is Moderate or Adult, only Residents, including yourself, who have set their maturity preference correctly will be able to access the region. Otherwise, if they try to enter, they'll be prompted either to set their preferences or be age-verified. See Maturity ratings for more information.

Guidelines for naming Private Regions

Follow these guidelines when naming your Private Region (island) or estate.

Private Region or estate names:

• Must not already be in use.

• Must be more than 2, but less than 26 characters (spaces count).

• Must contain three words or less.

• Must use only alphanumeric characters (no punctuation).

• Must not be the name of a real life city (however "New York Island" or "Los Angeles City" are fine).

• Cannot include SL, Linden, Linden Lab, Second Life etc in the name.

• Must comply with General maturity rating guidelines. 

Do not use the following as a Private Region name or estate name:

• The name of another person to the extent that it may cause deception or confusion.

• A name which violates any trademark right, copyright, or other proprietary right.

• A name which may mislead other users to believe you to be an employee of Linden Lab.

• A name which Linden Lab deems in its discretion to be vulgar or otherwise offensive (obscenities in any language and however spelled; language that is racist, sexist or otherwise derogatory in nature).

Linden Lab reserves the right to change Private Region and estate names as we see fit.

Ordering adjacent regions

It is possible for two people to order adjacent Private Regions. The first person must:

1. Order a Private Region, then log into the Second Life website and click the Land Manager tab.

2. Click the My Regions tab.

3. Click the estate name of the estate for which you want to allow neighbors.

4. In the Allowed Neighbors column, click the edit link for a specific region.

5. Type the name of the Resident you want to allow as a neighbor, then click Add.

6. Click Close.

The second person must

1. Order a Private Region as described in Purchasing from the land store.

2. During the ordering process, you may place your new region adjacent to the first person's region.

Private Region customizations

Initial customizations

With your region order, you can specify the following customizations:

• Name: You can select a unique name when creating the region. See the Guidelines for Private Region Naming for details.

• Terrain shape: You can select from one of the six predesigned templates (including flat green land and open water).

• Estate: You can assign your region to its own estate or to an estate you already own (with other Private Regions owned by you). Your Estate tools allow you to control settings for more than one region at once.

Additional features and controls for Private Regions and Estates

Estate owners possess a broad array of powers and options for maintaining their Private Regions and shaping them to fit their desired appearance. Many of these options can be found in the Second Life Viewer's Region/Estate window. For a more exhaustive list of management options such as region rollbacks, covenants, and terraforming tools, see Managing Private Regions.

Land parcels on your regions

Parcels can be sold to other Residents, but you remain responsible for the monthly payments. You can make arrangements for these new parcel owners to pay you for use of the estate, but that's between you and the other Residents. Many estate owners use the estate's covenant to explain their payment structure.

Estate owners can deed out the land parcels on regions in their estate to a group. The actual ownership is not conveyed to the group (you still own the regions), and group members cannot pay for your regions by contributing land allocations. The region owner (you) are always billed the region's monthly payment, no matter how the group land is set up. Read more about estates and groups in Group-owned land.

Renting a region for a special event

If you don't need to own a private region full time, we may be able to help! Linden Lab offers temporary Full Region rentals for events and limited time usage. Rental amounts are to be paid in full at the beginning of the rental period.

Details

• Reservations must be made 2 weeks in advance and are on a first-come first-served basis.

• Residents must include a full description of the event when applying.

• Minimal rental period is 3 days.

• Residents are allowed to terraform the land and do not incur tier fees for temporary ownership of the land.

• Residents cannot transfer the land during the rental period.

• The original state of the regions will be saved immediately before the rental period. At the conclusion of the rental period, the regions will be restored.

Rental rate

Land rental rates are different depending on whether you want to rent Private Regions or space on the mainland.

• Private Regions are US$50 per region per day.

• Mainland regions are L$4,000 per region per day.

• Mainland rental regions are Iridium, Osmium, Palladium, Platinum, Rhodium, and Ruthenium (named after the platinum group metals.)

• Linden Lab does not offer discounts on region rentals at this time.

Requesting a region rental

If you're interested in renting, please submit a Land and Region Issues ticket with the Region Request field set to Region Rental from our Support page.

Converting Private Regions

You may choose to convert some of your Private Regions from one Private Region type to another. This article covers the different scenarios and costs associated with each possible conversion. 

For information on converting your Regions from one capacity type to another (such as a full region to a homestead region), please see our article on Converting Private Regions.

Canceling your private region

If you no longer wish to own a private region, there are two ways to have the region removed from your ownership:

• You may transfer ownership of the Private Region to another Resident. This requires both you and the buyer to enter support tickets with certain details about the transaction. See Managing Private Regions for more details on the transfer process, cost, and timeframe.

• You may abandon your Private Region to Linden Lab. There is no fee to do so. No refunds will be given, and you will have the use of your region until the end of the current billing cycle. You need to notify the Concierge staff of your intention by submitting a ticket.

  1. Go to the Support Portal and click New Ticket Submission.

  2. In the Ticket Type dropdown, select Land and Region Issues.

  3. In the Region Request dropdown, select Region Cancellation Request.

  4. Fill out the requested details, and at the bottom, click Finish to submit the ticket.

When your ticket is processed, you'll receive a response indicating that the region will be taken offline on its next billing date and that you will not be charged any further maintenance fees. Please pick up or return any content on the region; any inventory remaining after the billing date will be deleted.

You can see billing dates and fees for all of your Private Regions at the Land Portal. If your Private Region fees are invoiced, you can see the date your billing cycle ends by logging into your Netsuite account.

Types of membership

There are several types of membership available in Second Life:

• Basic memberships, the standard free membership level with no recurring subscription fees

• Plus memberships, which add some entry-level perks and benefits to the standard free membership

• Premium memberships, which add a number of additional capabilities and benefits like Linden Homes

• Premium Plus memberships, offering the benefits of a Premium membership plus additional expanded capabilities and perks

  • Premium Plus Without Stipend memberships include all of the standard Premium Plus membership abilities, but does not receive a Linden dollar sign-up bonus or a weekly Linden dollar stipend

Residents are free to upgrade to a Plus, Premium or Premium Plus membership whenever they wish and may choose to return to a Basic account when their subscription time ends by downgrading on the Account Dashboard at secondlife.com. Premium subscriptions can be set to bill on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis. Plus and Premium Plus membership subscriptions can be set to bill on a monthly or annual basis (quarterly is not available at this time).

Basic membership

Basic memberships offer several benefits and perks that are available to all Second Life accounts:

• A fully customizable avatar with many starter outfits and looks

• Thousands of 3D environments, fun events, and great people

• The ability to build, script, and create on your own or with others

• Up to 30 stored offline instant messages

• The ability to create inworld groups (L$100 fee per group)

• And much, much more!

Plus membership

Plus memberships offer several benefits and perks that are not included with a Basic membership:

• The right to own mainland parcels in popular areas (512m² included with membership) 

• Linden dollar rewards (L$150 weekly stipend)

• Maximum number of group memberships increased from 50 to 55

• Up to 40 offline instant messages stored between logins

• A Linden Home available from a selection of themes that support 512m² parcels

• Additional ticketed technical support options available

Premium membership

Premium membership provides the following benefits:

• Your own private Linden Home

• Linden dollar rewards

• Exclusive virtual goods

• Premium-only sandboxes

• Live chat support

• The right to own mainland parcels in popular areas (1024m² included with membership)

• Maximum number of group memberships increased to 80

• Preferred access to highly populated regions, utilizing increased region capacity

• Access to premium-only events and experiences

• Cap on missed instant messages increased from 30 (Basic) to 120 (Premium)

• L$ transaction history increased from 32 days to 90 days

Premium Plus membership

In addition to the Premium membership features listed above, Premium Plus membership includes:

• The ability to belong to up to 150 groups

• An increased number of instant messages saved while you're offline (up to 240)

• A larger starting allowance of mainland included with your membership (2048m² included with membership)

• Discounts on L$ fees for uploading assets like textures, animations, and sounds

• Discounts on L$ fees for creating recurring events and creating groups

• Discounts on changing your username

• Direct phone access to assistance from customer support

• The ability to acquire an additional land-based experience in Second Life

• Selecting a specific Linden Home location by contacting customer support

• Access to exclusive Linden Home themes

• The ability to own a single homestead region without also owning a full region

• And more to come!

Premium Plus Without Stipend membership

Premium Plus Without Stipend memberships receive all of the perks of a standard Premium Plus membership, but do not receive a weekly Linden dollar stipend or a one-time sign-up bonus of Linden dollars. For those Residents who prefer to acquire Linden dollars on their own, or who have an active business which may generate Linden dollars for them, this option provides the flexibility of the Premium Plus membership bonuses at a more affordable subscription price.

Premium Plus Without Stipend memberships are available on a monthly or annual billing cycle. When you change to a Premium Plus Without Stipend membership from another paid subscription, your membership type is changed immediately, and depending on how much time you had left on your existing subscription, you may receive additional days of membership time credited to your account on a pro-rated basis, or receive a discount on the cost of your initial Premium Plus Without Stipend membership fee.

Please see Upgrading to a Premium Plus account for more information on how changing your membership works. When you choose to change your membership to a Premium Plus Without Stipend membership, you'll see a Review changes to your plan page before completing the checkout process. Please be sure to check the Today's Charges section of this page, as well as the Monthly Charges section, to be aware of how your fees and next billing date may be changed by your choices.

Upgrading to a Plus or Premium account

To upgrade to a Plus or Premium membership:

1. Log into the Second Life website.

2. On the left side of the screen, click Change Membership.

3. Click  Plan to display a chart of Membership plans and prices.

4. Select Plus (choose from Monthly or Annual billing) or Premium (choose from Monthly, Quarterly, or Annual billing options).

5. Review the upgrade fees and other changes to your account to confirm your choice.

6. Click Continue to checkout and check out via the Tilia Second Life Cashier.

7. Once you've completed check out, be sure to log out of the Second Life viewer and log back in again to enjoy your new benefits!

Upgrading to a Premium Plus account

To upgrade from any type of membership to Premium Plus:

1. Log into the Second Life website.

2. On the left side of the screen, click Change Membership.

3. Review the chart of Membership plans and prices and select Premium Plus (choose from Monthly or Annual billing options).

   • Please note, Premium Plus Without Stipend is checked by default. If you'd like the standard Premium Plus membership which receives a weekly L$ stipend, please uncheck this box before proceeding.

4. Review the upgrade fees, including discounts based on any existing membership subscriptions

5. Click Continue to checkout and check out via the Tilia Second Life Cashier.

6. Once you've completed check out, be sure to log out of the Second Life viewer and log back in again to enjoy your new benefits!

Existing Residents with a paid membership who wish to upgrade to a Premium Plus account will receive a discounted initial subscription for their new Premium Plus membership based on how much time is remaining on their current paid membership subscription. For example, if you are an Annual Premium subscriber with several months left on your membership subscription and you wish to upgrade to Premium Plus, you will only pay the difference between your current membership and your requested Premium Plus membership.

Annual Premium subscribers who wish to change to a monthly Premium Plus subscription may receive additional Premium Plus subscription time based on how much of their existing Annual Premium subscription remains. That is, if you have ten months of membership remaining on your Annual Premium membership, and choose to upgrade to monthly Premium Plus membership, you will receive extra Premium Plus time in exchange on a pro-rated basis. Please note that the day of the month that your membership renewal happens on may change as a result.

The upgrade page will display the charge (including discounts) in the Today's Charges section before completing the upgrade process, allowing Residents to check what their potential cost to upgrade might be before making any commitments.

Gifting a Premium membership to a friend

If you'd like to gift a Plus, Premium or Premium Plus membership to a friend, our Support team can help. Check out our Support Portal for the steps to gift a membership to another Resident.

Linden Homes

Linden Homes are ready-to-move-in homes that belong to a themed community and are available only to Plus, Premium and Premium Plus account members. Plus members have access to a selection of Linden Home themes which offer a 512m parcel size option, such as the Camper or Sakura theme homes. Premium Plus members have access to an additional selection of Linden Home themes with a larger parcel size and exclusive style options, such as Ranch, Mediterranean and Thousand Island homes.

Note: Linden Homes are available only in Moderate maturity regions. Residents who are not yet 18 years old will not be able to access a Linden Home region, even if they hold a valid Plus, Premium or Premium Plus membership. We're sorry for this inconvenience!

For more information on Linden Homes, see Overview of Linden Homes.

Linden dollar rewards

As a Premium or Premium Plus subscriber, you receive a sign-up bonus and a weekly stipend of Linden dollars. Plus members do not receive a sign-up bonus, but do receive a weekly stipend each week.

Sign-up bonus

Weekly Linden dollar rewards (stipend)

Eligible accounts receive stipends each week whether they log in or not. Stipends are paid every week on Tuesdays. To be eligible to receive a stipend, an account must have Plus, Premium, or Premium Plus status as of approximately 9pm Pacific on Monday (the day before stipends are sent out for the week). Delinquent accounts will not receive their stipend until their balance due is paid (up to 24-48 hours after the balance due is fully cleared).

• Plus members receive a weekly stipend of L$150

• Premium members receive a weekly stipend of L$300

• Premium Plus members receive a weekly stipend of L$650

Payments are based on information gathered from the database as of the preceding Monday. For example:

• If you begin an eligible membership subscription on Monday, April 14, you will receive your first stipend on Tuesday, April 15.

• If you begin an eligible membership subscription on Tuesday, April 15, you will receive your first stipend on Tuesday, April 22.

Due to technical issues, stipend payments may sometimes appear late in the day on Tuesdays or very occasionally on Wednesday; if you believe your stipend is late, it's worth checking the Status Blog to see if stipend payments for the week have been delayed.

Note: Eligible accounts which are currently delinquent will not receive their stipends while the account is past due; instead, the stipends will be placed on hold and automatically delivered after the account is no longer delinquent. (It may take up to 24-48 hours for held stipends to arrive after a balance is cleared).

Stipends for old accounts

The stipend amount for older accounts depends on what type of account you have and its age. Plus and Premium Plus accounts receive the standard stipend amount for their membership regardless of account age.

Premium accounts created or upgraded:

• On or after November 1, 2006 receive L$300 per week.

• Between July 21, 2006 and November 1, 2006 receive L$400 per week.

• Before July 21, 2006 receive L$500 per week.

Certain old Basic members get a stipend; Basic memberships created

• Before May 29, 2006 receive a stipend of L$50 per week, if they log in that week.

• After May 29, 2006 do not receive a weekly stipend.

Premium virtual goods (gifts)

As a Premium or Premium Plus member, you will periodically be offered exclusive premium virtual goods as a gift. These premium virtual goods are designed by Residents commissioned by Linden Lab and can be received at special inworld vending kiosks within Second Life. 

How to receive your premium virtual gift

To receive your premium virtual good, go to one of the inworld vending kiosks listed in the Second Life Destination Guide: http://secondlife.com/destinations/premium/gifts. If you are logged in to the website, go to https://secondlife.com/destinations/premium/gifts instead.

To use one of the kiosks:

1. Right-click the kiosk.

2. Choose Buy. (You won't be charged—the item is free for premium account holders.)

3. The item is transferred to your inventory.

The inworld vending kiosks only provide the latest Premium virtual good. Previous gifts become unavailable once a new gift is released, so check back regularly to ensure you don't miss out.

Object permissions on premium virtual gifts

Premium virtual goods are no modify, no transfer, copy, meaning you can make copies but cannot modify or transfer the items.

For general information on object permissions, see Object permissions.

How to get help for premium virtual gifts

Premium virtual gifts are commissioned by Linden Lab and designed by Residents. Please do not contact the creator for support. Each premium virtual good comes with an FAQ notecard to help you get started and answer common questions.

If you still have an unanswered question, email premium_feedback@lindenlab.com. We will update the notecard as needed, but cannot provide individual responses.

Frequently asked questions

I didn't receive the previous virtual gift, and the kiosk only provides the most recent one. Can I get the one I missed?

Sorry! The premium gift vending kiosks only provide the current premium virtual gifts. Previous offerings become unavailable once a new gift is released.

Can I take multiple copies of a gift from the kiosk?

Yes! As a Premium or Premium Plus member, you can take as many copies of the premium virtual gift as you like.

I accidentally deleted my premium virtual gift. Can I get it back?

Yes. As long as the next premium virtual gift has not been distributed, you can get it from an inworld kiosk.

Premium sandboxes

A sandbox is an area put aside for building practice. Much like real sandboxes and conceptual sandbox games, these are spaces of creativity and chaos. For more information on sandboxes, see Building tips.

Several sandboxes exist for specific purposes—such as the Weapons Testing Sandbox—but the majority are simply for regular building.  Signs within each sandbox area make it clear what kind of activities are allowed there.

Sandboxes usually have auto-return enabled to clean themselves several times a day; look for auto-clean information before building, so you aren't caught by surprise. Since sandboxes are experimental, they may also be unstable—be sure to take regular inventory backups of anything that's important.

Premium sandboxes are accessible only to Residents with Premium or Premium Plus memberships. Each sandbox is made up of four regions. Generally, there is one sandbox per Linden Home continent.

Find the premium sandboxes through the Second Life Destination Guide: http://secondlife.com/destinations/premium/sandboxes.

Other premium benefits

Premium and Premium Plus memberships also provide additional benefits:

Live chat support

Residents with Premium or Premium Plus memberships may initiate a live chat for support issues via the support portal. While Basic and Plus accounts do not qualify for live chat access, they are welcome to submit a ticket for assistance from the customer support team. Plus members have access to a wider variety of support topics for their ticket submission.

Right to own land in popular mainland areas

Certain membership levels permit Residents to own land on the mainland, which features large connected continents with roads, trains, and community spaces. The mainland is operated directly by Linden Lab, and only eligible membership levels may own land there.

Residents with a Plus, Premium or Premium Plus membership can buy mainland parcels. A certain amount of land maintenance fees are included with each level of maintenance, and Residents only need to pay an additional monthly fee if their land holdings exceed that included land allowance.

Plus members receive a land allowance of 512m² included in their membership fees. Premium members receive a land allowance of 1024m². And Premium Plus members receive an initial land allowance of 2048m², allowing them to own twice as much mainland as a Premium account before becoming subject to additional land use fees. For more information, please see Land Use Fees.

Increased number of group memberships

The number of groups a Resident can belong to simultaneously is limited by their membership type:

If you choose to downgrade to a different account membership, you can keep your existing number of active group memberships. However, if you wish to join any new groups and currently belong to more than your new membership level allows, you will have to leave some of your active groups in order to join a new one.

Preferred access to highly populated regions

Regions in Second Life have a bonus capacity to allow region owners, estate managers, and Residents with Premium and Premium Plus accounts to enter an otherwise full Region. The default limit on the number of avatars allowed in a region is as follows:

• Full Regions support an extra 10% (100 to 110)

• Homesteads support an extra 25% (20 to 25)

• Open Spaces support an extra 20% (10 to 12)

For full details on access to bonus region capacity, see Improved Region Capacity and Access on the Second Life Blog.

Downgrading or canceling your Premium membership

Downgrading from Premium or Premium Plus to a different membership

To downgrade your membership, follow these steps:

1. Log into the Second Life website.

2. On the left side of the screen, click Account and select Premium Membership.

3. Click Change Membership Plan to display a chart of available Membership plans and prices.

   • If you prefer to downgrade to a Premium or Plus subscription, select your preferred plan and click Change Membership.

   • Review the changes on the following screen and click Continue to Checkout to proceed.

4. If you prefer to downgrade to a Basic membership, click the Choose Basic Account link beneath your current membership plan

5. Review the changes on the next page and click Continue to Checkout. Your new plan becomes effective on your next billing date.

Halting a premium downgrade

If you change your mind about downgrading, you can cancel your upcoming downgrade at your account dashboard at the Second Life website.

To cancel your account downgrade:

1. Log into the Second Life website.

2. On the left side of the screen, click Account and select Change Membership.

3. A yellow box at the top of the screen will read Downgrade Requested. This box contains information about when your account will downgrade to a new level of membership.

4. At the bottom of this box, click Cancel Request.

5. The box will update to show that your downgrade has been cancelled successfully, and you can confirm your current account status and when you will bill next on your Account Summary page.

Once you've canceled your downgrade request, your membership will renew as usual on your next billing date.

Canceling your account

When you cancel your account, it is deactivated and you will lose access to it at your next billing review date. If you're thinking about canceling your account entirely, consider leaving it active with a Basic membership, which costs nothing to maintain. If at some point in the future you should choose to revisit Second Life, your avatar and your inventory will be here waiting for you.

You can cancel your account by going to the Delete Account page after logging in with your Second Life username and password. This link is also accessible through the Account section on the left of your Dashboard.

Once logged in, select the reason why you have chosen to delete your account and then find the Cancel Account button at the bottom of the page. Your account will remain open until your billing review date, as account maintenance fees are paid in advance.

Land charges after downgrading or canceling your account

If you cancel or downgrade your account from Plus, Premium, or Premium Plus, you may still be charged for your most recent month's land holdings, depending on your billing cycle. Land allowance fees are calculated based on your previous month's usage – for example, the amount of mainland that you own during the month of January will determine how much your land bill is in February.

As stated on the Land Pricing & Use Fees page:

Land use fees are billed based on the peak amount of land held during your previous 30-day billing cycle. This includes land parcels owned directly in your name as well as land allowance donated to groups. Peak usage is measured by the maximum amount of land you held or donated — for any length of time — during your billing cycle.

As a result, every account is charged for their maximum amount of land allowance used (by owning land directly or donating to a group) during the current billing cycle, regardless of whether they cancelled their account before the end of the month.

For example:

• You own 2048 meters of mainland on your premium account, Jane Pumpernickel. You decide to downgrade to a Basic (free) account on your next renewal date, July 1st, so you sell your 2048 meters of mainland to your neighbor, Marcel Baguette, on June 30th.

• Your monthly land allowance fee for your land is usually $7 (in addition to your premium membership) based on the amount of land you own.

• On July 1st, your account converts to a basic (free) account as you've requested, and will no longer be charged for membership fees.

• Because you owned your mainland from June 1st-June 30th, your account will be charged $7 for the land allowance used during that time.

Note: When you cancel your account, it remains active until the end of your payment period. You may still log in and use Second Life during this time. For instance, if you buy an annual Second Life Premium membership and cancel it the next day, you'll receive many of the benefits of membership through the end of your membership period, though owning mainland with a non-renewing subscription is not currently supported by the land system at this time. If you'd like assistance with your non-renewing premium subscription and benefits, please contact our Support team.

Before you start troubleshooting: First check the Second Life grid status page to make sure there are currently no known issues that prevent login. Whenever there's an outage or other problem that might be causing logins to fail, Second Life staff will generally post to this grid status page to update Residents about what's going on.

Error messages

If you can't log in to Second Life, the error message may indicate the source of the issue.

Despite our best efforts, something has gone wrong.

Under most circumstances, the "Despite our best efforts" (sometimes called DOBE) message indicates that there's some kind of network or connection issue that's preventing your login from succeeding. In some cases, the login signal is simply taking too long to receive an answer; in others, there may be an outage or a network routing issue that's blocking connection altogether.

It's always a good idea to check the Status Blog for Second Life for information about potential outages, just in case the issue is affecting other Residents, too.

Sometimes, restarting your computer and your router will resolve this issue. If not, please contact our Second Life customer support team. 

From time to time, internet service providers have issues with their DNS services failing to update to a new route to Second Life's servers. When that happens, changing your computer's settings to use an alternative DNS provider can help get around the connection problem. You may wish to try using a public DNS provider like Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 DNS service or Google DNS to see if that will resolve the issue.  See Google's documentation on Using Google Public DNS for more information.

Waiting for region handshake

The "Waiting for Region Handshake" message occurs when the Second Life Viewer does not receive an acknowledgement from the server. The usual cause of this error is a firewall blocking UDP packets. You may need to reconfigure your firewall to resolve this problem.

For information on how to configure firewalls, see: Using Second Life with a firewall.

Your account is not accessible until (date/time)

If the error states that you are already logging in (or out), then Second Life is still attempting to log out your avatar. Close Second Life, wait five minutes, then attempt to log in again.

If you see this error message:

Login failed; Your account is not accessible until (date/time) 

— this usually means that your Second Life account has been administratively blocked. Short-term blocks (less than an hour) may be the result of inappropriate behavior inworld. Longer blocks are typically the result of abuse.

You will be unable to use Second Life until the indicated time; if that is more than an hour away, you will receive an email from the abuse team on the matter. Be sure to check your spam filters or junk mail folders.  

Linden Lab is unable to remove administrative blocks for abuse.

Second Life cannot be accessed from this computer

This messages generally indicates you have been blocked from the Second Life servers by Linden Lab as the result of:

• Documented cases of fraud

• Use of Second Life by a minor

• Exceptionally flagrant abuse activity

Note that someone else in your household may be responsible for this activity, not necessarily with your account. 

If you believe that this is an error, submit a support ticket via the support portal. To help customer support determine what block has been placed and why, include in the ticket your Second Life account name and any Second Life accounts that log in from your location.

DNS could not resolve the host name

This error may also appear as:

• Host http not found 

• Login failed. Unable to connect to a simulator.

These messages indicate that your computer has a general networking issue with the domain name service (DNS) that translates numerical IP addresses into human-readable ones, or that the domain name service (DNS) you're using cannot locate Second Life's servers.

Confirm that you can reach internet sites such as secondlife.com, Google, or others. If you have difficulty connecting to other websites, you may be experiencing an internet outage. Consider contacting your internet provider for assistance.

You can check the Status Blog for Second Life for information about potential outages, too.

Sometimes, restarting your computer and your router will resolve this issue. If not, contact your internet service provider. From time to time, internet service providers have issues with their DNS services failing to update to a new route to Second Life's servers. When that happens, changing your computer's settings to use an alternative DNS provider can help get around the connection problem. You may wish to try using a public DNS provider like Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 DNS service or Google DNS to see if that will resolve the issue.  See Google's documentation on Using Google Public DNS for more information. 

Possible causes

Linden Lab may have temporarily restricted all logins

Linden Lab occasionally restricts access to Second Life when its servers experience severe technical difficulties or require major maintenance. These types of outages affect a large number (or all) Residents and are not limited to your computer or account, and will typically be blogged about on the Status Blog.

Check the status of the Second Life at http://status.secondlifegrid.net. This page lists any known issues.

Wrong password

Incorrect passwords are a common cause of login failure. Passwords are case-sensitive, so remember to check Caps Lock if you know you entered your password correctly.

If you've forgotten your user name or password, follow the instructions in Account credentials to retrieve it. 

Account disabled due to delinquency

If you do not pay your land usage fees (tier), membership subscription fees, or private region fees in a timely fashion, your account and your alternate accounts may be disabled for delinquency. For more information, see Delinquency Policy. To avoid this, be sure to keep your method of payment up to date and to use the Change Membership option at secondlife.com's Account Dashboard if you want to adjust your membership before it renews.

Account on hold due to disciplinary action

If we find that a Resident has broken our Terms of Service, Community Standards, or other policies, we may place that Resident's account on hold as a disciplinary measure. When we place an account on hold in this way, we send an email to the account holder at the address registered to that account.

Important: Make sure you add "secondlife.com" and "lindenlab.com" to your email client's trusted senders list to prevent our messages from getting marked as spam or junk mail.

The system is logging you out

Your previous session must be logged out before you can get back into Second Life. Sometimes, usually after a recent logout or crash, Second Life mistakenly thinks you are still logged in. If you receive a login failure message stating that "The system is logging you out...," try waiting a few minutes before logging in again. If you continue to receive this message, you may be a victim of "stuck presence," which can be fixed by restarting the region in which your avatar is stuck.

Residents with Premium, Premium Plus, or Concierge level accounts may request a region restart via live chat, ticket submission, or phone support. Residents with a Plus membership can request assistance via a Support ticket. Basic accounts do not have access to avatar-level support at this time.

Connection issues while using a VPN

VPNs (virtual private networks) can be very useful for Residents for a number of reasons, including general Internet privacy, navigating regional connection issues, or accessing Second Life from a location or institution which doesn't generally support connections to services like Second Life. However, VPNs do have some limitations and drawbacks that can affect connections to Second Life. In some instances, VPN traffic to Second Life's servers may be limited or restricted based on the activity of other users, or for other security and network reasons. Some VPNs also limit or shape network traffic in ways that aren't optimized for Second Life usage.

If you use a VPN and experience connection issues only while connected to it, please contact your VPN provider for assistance.

What to do

If you're not sure why you can't log in, try these things:

1. Double-check your username and password. If you continue to receive an error message, try logging into the Second Life website. If you are unable to log into the website, the problem is likely to be your username or password. Follow the Forgot your login information? instructions on the website to reset your password.

2. Change your login location to a different region. See below for instructions on how to do this.

3. Restart your computer, modem, and router. When restarting, make sure to leave everything powered off for at least ten seconds before restarting. This step can often fix routing issues and other connection-related problems.

4. If you use a VPN, try disconnecting from the VPN. If your connection issue resolves when your VPN is disconnected, contact your VPN provider for assistance -- you may need to update your settings or service in order to continue using a VPN with Second Life.

5. If you are still unable to log in, premium and Concierge Residents may contact customer support via live chat, support cases (tickets), or telephone.  Basic customers may file a support case.  See How to contact customer support for more information.

Change your login location

A starting location field appears on the login screen; you may choose to log in at your last location, your home, or you may enter the name of any Region by clicking in the box and typing its name in order to attempt to log into that Region directly.

If you're having difficulty logging in, it's worth trying a different region as your login location. You can switch your login location to your home, your last location, or to a region of your choice. If you're not sure of a region name to use, you can always try a Linden-owned region like Plum (General maturity) or Pooley (Moderate maturity) or Arapaima (Adult maturity).

If you like, you can also enable your favorite locations in the dropdown on the login screen to always be available in the dropdown options by selecting the Show favorite locations on login screen option in the Preferences window:

1. Start Second Life. At the login screen, go to Me > Preferences.

2. Click the General tab.

3. Check the box marked Show favorite locations on login screen.

4. Click OK.

Animated mesh (animesh) is a Second Life feature to allow independent objects to use rigged mesh and animations, just as you can with mesh avatars. This means that you can have wild animals, pets, vehicles, scenery features and other objects that play animations.

For a selection of test resources (animations and models) to try out working with animesh, see our archive at Github - Test content for public Project Animesh Testing.

If you need a place to test animesh content, there are some dedicated test regions at Animesh1 and Animesh2, which are set to moderate maturity, and Animesh Adult, which is intended for adult content.

Creating animesh objects

The animesh viewer adds one new feature to the UI for editing an in-world object.

• Right click a rigged mesh object you have permissions to edit and click Edit

• Select the Features tab

• Check Animated Mesh to turn the object into an animesh object

There are some restrictions: the object must be one you have permissions to modify, it must not exceed the maximum triangle count limit for animesh objects, and you must be in an animesh-enabled region. If any of these condition are not met then the checkbox will not be enabled.

Animating animesh objects

Simply setting an object to Animated Mesh doesn't get it moving right away -- it needs an animation file and a script which tells that animation to play.

• Select your animesh object (Right-click > Edit)

• Open the Content tab

• Add your animation and your script to play the animation to the animesh object's contents by dragging them from your Inventory into the Contents box

Animesh adds three new LSL functions that can be used to run or stop animations, or check which animations are currently running. The commands are:

• llStartObjectAnimation

• llStopObjectAnimation

• llGetObjectAnimationNames

For more information on how to use these functions in scripts to use with animesh objects, please click above to visit the Second Life Wiki LSL Portal entry for each one.

Advanced animesh topics

Editing animesh position and orientation

A conventional static mesh object has a position defined when it’s rezzed and an orientation defined when it’s created. An animesh object still has an actual object position in a region, but the displayed mesh is shown at a location determined by its underlying skeleton and currently playing animations. Because of this, the visual location of an animesh object playing an animation may be at some displacement from its "real" position for physics and scripting purposes. Or in simpler terms, the bear object above has a 'fixed' location used for physics and scripts calculations, but its animation may cause it to wiggle around a bit visually. It never actually changes coordinates.

The skeleton is positioned relative to the original object as follows:

• The object position is used as the location for the skeleton root joint.

• The object orientation matches the root object orientation. If the root object is a mesh, the bind shape matrix will be used.

• Playing animations can alter the visual position and orientation further by animating the pelvis joint.

One result is that animesh objects will normally be oriented with their local X-axis as the forward direction. Static mesh objects are not necessarily created in this orientation, so there may be a change in orientation when an object becomes animesh. However, if the root object of an animesh linkset is a mesh, the bind shape matrix will also be used. This means that if you want your object to be oriented relative to the static mesh representation, you can use an animesh root mesh. If you want your object to have standard X-forward skeleton orientation, you can use a non-mesh root object (for example, a simple invisible prim) and then align your mesh child objects relative to that.

Basically, if your static mesh object suddenly faces a different direction when you click Animated Mesh in the Edit window, you may find it helpful to check how the mesh was created originally, or to link your new animesh object to a root object and manipulate it accordingly until it faces the direction you want it to face.

Using the Edit > Rotation and Edit > Move settings will adjust an animesh object's forward orientation and actual position (coordinates), but Edit > Scale cannot change the animesh object's skeleton, so the object will not visually change size. 

Position and Scale Constraints

There are some constraints on the scale and positioning of animesh objects. These are intended to maintain consistency with limits on other types of in-world objects (such as conventional prims), and to make the behavior more predictable.

• There is a 64m scale limit for animesh objects. Objects exceeding this size threshold will be scaled down so their computed bounding box does not exceed 64m.

• There is a 3m offset limit for animesh objects. Offset is the distance between the "official" location of the static object and the bounding box of the animesh object as displayed. The display location of animesh objects will be constrained to not exceed this limit.

These constraints are based on a real-time bounding box maintained for rigged meshes, so they may be triggered at some times and not others depending on the animations being played. For performance reasons the box does not update every frame, so the constraints can lag behind the current appearance slightly.

Animesh building suggestions

Animesh objects do not have attachments the way avatars do. To combine multiple meshes in a single animesh, you would link them together into a single linkset. If you link together multiple meshes, the original source meshes and any corresponding physics representations can be scattered around multiple locations. The meshes will all still display rigged to a single skeleton, with orientation as noted above. The recommended practice for now is to have a root prim that’s not a rigged mesh, and associate any physics representation with that root prim. The rigged meshes would then be non-physical children of this root.

Also note that like rigged meshes on avatars, the rigged meshes in animesh objects are non-physical. The animation process only affects how things display on the viewer, so if you want to have a physics shape that lines up with your animesh object, you will need to manage the positioning and animations accordingly.

Animesh attachments

Animesh objects can also be attachments on your avatar. Like a conventional static attachment, an animesh attachment will move with the selected attachment point on your avatar, such as your right shoulder or left hand. Animesh attachments can then run animations, which can change their apparent position relative to their attachment point (for example, if the pelvis joint is part of the animation).

Like static attachments, animesh attachments can be repositioned using the editing controls. Changing position or rotation will move the attachment relative to its attachment point.

Currently, you can have at most one (1) animesh attachment at a time as a Basic or Plus member, two (2) animesh attachments if you are a Premium members, and three (3) attachments as a Premium Plus member.

Animesh Skeleton State and Customization

Avatars support extensive customization via sliders. The bones in an avatar skeleton are positioned and scaled based on these customization settings, which are stored mostly in the avatar's shape wearable. Animesh objects do not currently support this type of customization; they do not have shape wearables, so there is no way to do the same kind of skeleton customization for them. The bone positions and scales for an animesh object are simply initialized from the default bone settings (defined in some configuration files that are part of the viewer installation - avatar_skeleton.xml and avatar_lad.xml). These default bone positions and scales can be overridden in the uploaded meshes, using values defined when the meshes were created. This is the same joint position mechanism that rigged meshes can also use to customize avatar positioning.

We know there is a lot of interest in supporting more extensive customization of animesh objects, and are hoping to tackle this in a future project.

Animesh information and displays

Some additional displays are available to help you see the state of animesh objects:

In the Advanced menu, the option Performance Tools > Show avatar complexity information shows you the computed complexity cost for avatars. The complexity display only works for avatars and independent animesh objects. Attached animesh objects have their complexity added to the avatar they are attached to, so they are not shown with a complexity display of their own. Show avatar complexity information now works for animesh objects as well and includes additional information as follows:

• VisTris is the number of currently displayed triangles associated with the object, based on the currently displayed LODs (levels of detail) for its component primitives.

•  EstMaxTris is an estimated triangle count for the most complex LODs of the object; this is the number used to determine whether an object exceeds the triangle count complexity limit for animesh objects.

Another updated display is Develop > Render Metadata > Collision skeleton. This will show the collision volumes for animesh objects as well as avatars, with the animesh objects shown a different color:

• The avatar in the example image has a blue skeleton

• The animesh bear is shown with a red skeleton

In the same menu, Develop > Render Metadata > Joints will show the regular bones in the skeleton of both avatars and animesh objects.

Both of the Render Metadata displays have a significant performance impact, so you will probably not want to enable them most of the time. 

Animesh FAQ

What happens if I have an unsupported viewer?

If you visit an animesh-enabled region with a non-animesh viewer, you will see animesh objects as non-animated static mesh objects, and animesh attachments as rigged meshes on the host avatar. By 2026, most actively supported third party viewers and all versions of the default Second Life desktop viewer support viewing animesh content.

How can report a bug or request new features?

Please report the bug using the standard bug & feedback process, and include ANIMESH in the title.

How can I engage with other users of animesh?

• Visit the content creation forum area for animesh: https://community.secondlife.com/forums/forum/354-animesh/. Linden Lab will monitor this area while animesh is under development, and we will try to respond to questions of general interest.

• Attend the Content Creation User Group meeting, which is held most weeks on Thursday. All are welcome. See the Content Creation User Group Wiki Page for location and schedule information.

Will any of my pre-animesh content change?

No. Animesh is a new setting for mesh objects. Any content created without that setting should continue to work the same as before. If you see any change in the behavior of non-animesh objects, please report it as a bug.

What’s the difference between an animesh attachment and a regular rigged mesh attachment? When should I use one or the other?

Animesh attachments have a complete skeleton of their own, so they can move completely independently from your avatar. For example, an animesh fairy could flap its own wings separately from the wings on your avatar (this also means that animations between animesh objects and your own avatar may not be completely in sync, since they are animated independently). An animesh attachment can also become an independent object if it is detached. Regular mesh attachments use your avatar’s skeleton, so if they want to animate any part of your avatar they have to cooperate with other attachments. There are some cases where you could use either an animated attachment or a rigged mesh: if the object uses joints that are not being used for anything else, for example, it animates the wing bones of an avatar that does not have wings, then this could be implemented using either a regular rigged mesh attachment or an animesh attachment.

Are there any restrictions on animesh content?

The current limits are intended to help manage the performance costs associated with animesh objects:

• There is a limit to how many animesh objects can be attached to an avatar at one time. Currently this is a maximum of one for Basic and Plus members, two for Premium members, and 3 for Premium Plus members.

• Animesh objects in-world (ie, not attached to an avatar) will have a land impact that counts against the limits for the region they are in.

  • Currently being animesh adds an additional 15 to the land impact of an object to reflect the extra resources these objects utilize.

  • There is an additional land impact cost of 1.5 per 1,000 charged triangles in the model.

    • All triangles in the highest LOD are charged, but only triangles exceeding a limit are charged in the coarser LODs; there is no LI penalty for LODs as long as each does not exceed half the complexity of the next highest level - for example, if the highest LOD has 10,000 triangles, you could make LODs with no penalty up to 5,000 triangles in the medium LOD, 2,500 in the low LOD, and 1,250 in the lowest LOD. LODs that exceed those limits will be counted against the LI only for any excess above those limits.

• Animesh objects have a complexity limit based on triangle count. Currently an animesh object can have at most 100,000 triangles in its most detailed LOD. This 100,000 limit is based on estimated triangle count, so the actual number of triangles can often be a bit higher.

• Attached animesh objects, like other attachments, do not count against land impact. However, they do affect the Avatar Rendering Cost calculations for the avatar they are attached to. The ARC for animesh objects, like the ARC for avatars, incorporates the effects of graphics properties of the mesh objects, and is scaled to be roughly proportional to the land impact - for example, if an animesh object has 50% higher land impact than the corresponding static mesh, then the ARC for that animesh should also be roughly 50% higher.
   

This article describes the different types of Second Life accounts. You can manage your Second Life account on the web at https://secondlife.com/my/account/.

Account types

There are several types of Second Life accounts: Basic, Plus, Premium, Premium Plus, Premium Plus No Stipend, and Concierge.

Basic

A basic account is completely free. With a basic account you can:

• Own estates or Private Regions.

• Rent land anywhere, depending on the landowner's renting preferences.

• Have a covenant agreement on Private Regions or estates owned by other Residents.

• Submit support cases for a limited set of problems.

However, with a basic account you cannot:

• Own land on the mainland.

• Access live chat customer support.

One person can have multiple free basic accounts, subject to the alt account policy.

Plus

A Plus membership subscription requires a monthly fee.

Plus memberships offer several benefits and perks that are not included with a Basic membership:

• The right to own mainland parcels in popular areas 

• Access to a Linden Home in a selection of themes which support 512m parcels

• A weekly stipend of Linden dollars - see Linden dollar rewards for more information

• Maximum number of group memberships increased from 50 to 55

• Additional ticketed technical support options available

Premium

A Premium membership subscription requires a monthly fee.

With a Premium membership you can:

• Own land on the mainland, including a Linden Home. 

• Get free exclusive virtual goods

• Have access to premium sandboxes

• Submit support cases for an expanded set of problems.

• Initiate live chat sessions with customer support.

• Get a weekly stipend of Linden dollars. For more information, see Linden dollars (Getting your premium account stipend).

For more information about specific Premium membership benefits, see Premium membership.

Signup bonus

When you register a Premium account, you receive a one-time signup bonus of L$1000 in approximately 45 days.

Premium Plus & Premium Plus No Stipend

A Premium Plus account also requires a monthly fee. Standard Premium Plus accounts receive a weekly stipend of Linden Dollars and a sign-up bonus of Linden Dollars the first time they sign up for a Premium Plus membership.

Premium Plus No Stipend members receive all of the benefits of a standard Premium Plus account, but do not receive weekly L$ stipends or the sign-up bonus.

Premium Plus memberships include the perks and advantages of a standard Premium membership as well as:

• The ability to belong to up to 150 groups

• An increased number of instant messages saved while you're offline (up to 240)

• A larger starting allowance of mainland included with your membership

• Discounts on L$ fees for uploading assets like textures, animations, and sounds

• Discounts on L$ fees for creating recurring events and creating groups

• Discounts on changing your username

• Direct phone access to assistance from customer support

• The ability to acquire an additional land-based experience in Second Life

• Exclusive Linden Home themes available only to Premium Plus members

• And more!

For more information, see Premium membership.

Signup bonus

Standard Premium Plus memberships receive a one-time sign-up bonus of L$3000 approximately 45 days after upgrading to a Premium Plus membership. This bonus is automatically deposited to your avatar's Linden dollar balance.

Premium Plus No Stipend members do not receive sign-up bonuses.

Concierge

Any account that owns a private estate, pays for a private estate, or pays land maintenance fees (tier) for more than half a region's worth of mainland parcels qualifies for Concierge status.

With a Concierge account, you also have access to a special live chat area and phone number through the support portal.

It is possible to have a Basic account and still qualify for Concierge service. Basic account holders can own estates and Private Regions, the setup and monthly costs for which are billed separately from land on the mainland (which can be owned only by premium account holders). A Basic account that satisfies the requirements for Concierge service described above qualifies as a Concierge-level Resident.

Scripted agent status

If you own a Second Life account that is primarily operated by a scripted agent, or "bot", you must identify it as a bot by setting its status on your Second Life Account page.

By identifying bots, you help us provide you with more accurate account statistics and inworld search results. For more information about bots and scripted agent status, see:

• Scripted Agent Status section of your account page on the Second Life website.

• Bot policy.

Inactive or canceled accounts

As long as you're in good standing with Linden Lab (not delinquent with billing or otherwise in violation of the Community Standards and Terms of Service) your Second Life account can remain inactive indefinitely. This means that your avatar and inventory will continue to be stored on the Second Life servers.

Canceling an account

If you're thinking about canceling your premium account, consider leaving it active with a basic membership, which costs nothing to maintain. If at some point in the future you should choose to revisit Second Life, your avatar and your inventory will be here waiting for you.

If you do decide to cancel your account:

1. Log in to the Second Life website with your Second Life username and password.

2. On the Account Dashboard, click Account on the upper left, then click Delete Account.

3. Select the reason you'd like to close your account, then click Delete Account to proceed.

Your account will remain open until your billing review date, as account maintenance fees are paid in advance.

Re-activating a canceled account

If you have canceled your account, you may be able to restore it, depending on how long ago it was cancelled.

Warning: While we do our best to reactivate older accounts fully, in some cases the associated inventory, land, and Linden dollar balance may be unrecoverable.

To reactivate your account if you remember your avatar name and password:

1. Visit our Second Life Support site

2. Select Sign In to your Second Life Account and log in as the account you wish to reactivate.

3. If prompted to reactivate your account, follow the provided instructions.

4. Otherwise, click Submit a Support Case to contact our Support team for assistance.

   1. Under Issue Type, choose Account Issue.

   2. Under Account Issue, select Reactivate Account.

   3. Enter the required information.

   4. Click Submit.

If you don't remember your avatar name or password, or to create a support case for assistance when prompted by the login page:

1. Visit our Second Life Support site.

2. Select Continue as Guest and enter your email address in the Requester field.

   • Please be sure this is an email you have access to, so our Support team can respond via email.

3. Under Issue Type, choose Account Issue.

4. Under Account Issue, select Reactivate Account.

5. Enter the required information.

6. Click Submit.

Before you start

Important: The best and most reliable way to access Second Life is to install a standalone program, the Second Life Viewer. The installation process is quick and easy, but your computer must meet the System Requirements. Second Life will generally not run on systems that fail to meet these requirements.

Registering for and installing Second Life

Follow this quick two-step process to register for and install Second Life.

1. Choose your unique username and provide your account information

Your username is the account name that you use to log in to Second Life. It has to be unique, so you may not get to choose a simple or common name. Later, you can also choose a display name that everyone sees in addition to your username. For more information, see Usernames and Display names.

Warning: Choose your username carefully! Once chosen, you can't change it without paying a fee. Although you can designate a "display name," your username will still be visible, and others may use it to refer to you.

Fill in your remaining account details including your email address, date of birth, and password. Make sure to use a memorable security question in case you forget your password!

Note: When you create your account, you will receive a message in your email asking you to verify your email address. Verify your address in order to receive offline messages from other Second Life Residents and to ensure that Second Life can send you important emails like password help and receipts.

3. Download and install Second Life

To best enjoy the rich 3D content in Second Life, you must download and install the Second Life Viewer, an application that runs on Windows and Mac OS. Most web browsers will know which version of the installer you need automatically; if that does not happen, just click Download & Install Second Life for the operating system you prefer to use.

You may need to run the installer program manually after downloading.

Additionally, you can visit the Downloads page for permanent links to the current version of the official desktop viewer, as well as links to popular third party viewer Firestorm (and our third-party viewer directory with other viewer options) as well as the beta mobile viewers for Android and iOS.

Your first steps inworld

Now that you've registered for Second Life and installed the Second Life Viewer, you're ready to start your adventure in the virtual world—or "inworld," as we call it.

Logging in

Start the Second Life Viewer and then log in to Second Life by entering the username and password you selected when you registered. If you have problems logging in, see Login failure in the Second Life Knowledge Base.

The first time you log in, you will typically be in an area known as the Welcome Hub which is set up especially for new users. Follow the signs and simple instructions to learn the basic skills you'll need, with an in-world Quickstart Guide area to help you master the basics of using Second Life in the desktop viewer.

The following sections describe the most important parts of the Viewer and how to get the most out of your experience.

Viewer Layout

In the Second Life desktop viewer, there are a few key menu and button areas to be aware of, in addition to the standard Menu options at the top menu bar (Me, Avatar, Communicate, World, Build, Help):

• At the top of the main viewer window, there's an Address Bar with your current location, as well as a Home button to teleport you back to your Home location.

  • You can type in this address bar if you like (just like a web browser), and like a web browser, past locations you've teleported to in your current session will show up in the address bar if you click on the down arrow to the right.

  • Your location may also have special icons on the address bar that indicate restrictions on things like flying, creating new objects, or using voice chat.

• To the right of the Address Bar (top right corner), there's a Search Menu box, a Buy L$ button (to purchase inworld currency, the Linden Dollar or L$), as well as a clock showing the time in the "Second Life Timezone" (SLT), which is the same as the Pacific timezone.

  • To the right of the clock are icons for setting your media preferences, like volume, and to start and stop media from playing near you (like music or videos).

• Along the left-hand side of the main view area are a number of icon buttons -- hovering your mouse over one of these buttons will display what the button does, but some common options are:

  • The suitcase (opens your Inventory, the collection of objects your avatar owns within Second Life)

  • The magnifying glass (opens the Search interface)

  • The globe (opens the World Map)

  • The microphone (Voice Chat) and speech bubble (Text Chat)

  • ...and many more!

• At the bottom of the main view area are more control buttons. You can freely drag and move buttons from the left sidebar to the bottom action bar if you like, customizing which features you want to use however you wish.

Basic skills

Some of the first things you'll want to learn how to do include:

• Walking

• Flying

• Changing your view

• Text chatting

• Changing your avatar

• Interacting with objects

• Finding out more about nearby people

• Controlling inworld media

Walking

There are four ways to make your avatar walk:

• Click to walk. Simply click on the ground at the point to which you want to go.  If your mouse pointer turns into a hand instead of an arrow, you won't move but will instead interact with the object under your mouse pointer.  See the Interacting with objects section.

• Use the arrow keys. The up-arrow ↑ and down-arrow ↓ keys walk you forward and backward, respectively.  The left-arrow ← and right-arrow → keys turn you left and right, respectively.

• Use the W, S, A, and D keys. The W and S keys make you walk forward and backward. The A and D keys turn you left and right, respectively.  Make sure you click inworld first so that the chat field doesn't have focus.  Otherwise, you'll be typing chat text instead of walking.

• Click the Walk/Run/Fly button to open the Movement controls.  You can click which direction you'd like your avatar to move, as well as toggle between walk, run, and fly modes.

Running

To run forward, simply double-click the W or up-arrow ↑ key. To run backward, double-click S or the down-arrow ↓ key.

Flying

Flying in Second Life is really fun, and it lets you move around much faster than you can by walking or running.

To fly, press and hold the Page Up key or the E key.  Press and hold the Page Down key or the C key to land. You can also click the Walk / Run / Fly icon button to open the Movement Floaters if you like.

Use the same keys to move through the air as you do to walk.

Note: Some regions don't allow flying. In these areas, you'll see this icon in the location bar  and you won't be able to fly.  

Keyboard shortcuts 

See Keyboard shortcuts for a quick reference guide.

Changing your view

By default, your view is from directly behind and slightly above your avatar.  However, it's often useful to see things from a different viewpoint!

There are several ways to change your view:

• To rotate your view, click and drag anywhere on the world. NOTE: If your mouse pointer turns into a hand before you click, then you'll interact with the object instead of rotating your view.

• To zoom in, press and hold the Alt key, then click and drag your mouse; or use your mouse wheel.

• To orbit, press and hold the Alt and Control keys, then click and drag your mouse. 

• Click the View button and use the controls, shown at left. 

To return to the default view, press the Esc key.

Text chatting

Click the Chat button (by default in the bottom toolbar) to text chat with people nearby.  Everyone within twenty meters of you will be able to see what you type.

To shout, press Control-Enter instead of Enter after typing your chat text.  Everyone within 100 meters will be able to see what you type.

Click the triangle icon in the chat field to show recent chat history. 

Mouse over names in chat history and then click the   icon for more options. 

Changing your avatar

Click the Avatar menu and select Avatar Welcome Pack... for a selection of free starting avatars for your usage. The first tab has images of the currently available avatar options and the second tab has clothing for those avatars, which you can mix and match. For more information on customizing your avatar, see Controlling your avatar's appearance. 

Interacting with objects

To interact with any object you encounter, right-click it and select from the menu of actions and tools. For example, you can right-click on a chair and choose Sit Here from the menu to have your avatar automatically sit on the chair.  

Some objects (such as furniture) automatically provide a "sit" icon when you mouse over them.  Simply click on the object to sit on it. To stand up again, just click the Stand button that appears near the bottom of the window

If your mouse cursor turns into a hand when over an object, you may be able to interact with the object by clicking on it.  In some cases, clicking performs an action (such as turning on a light switch); sometimes, the object displays a special menu that lets you select from a variety of actions.

When you hover your mouse cursor over an object, you may also see an information box, for example as illustrated at left. Click on the  icon for more information about the object.

Finding out more about nearby people

To find out about those nearby, mouse over their avatars and click the  icon that appears.

You'll get an information box with:

• Their avatar name and how long they've been in Second Life.

• Profile "biography" information (if they've added it).

• Voice chat volume control for that person only.

• A View full profile link to see more options and information. See the Using Profiles section.

Controlling inworld media

Many areas in Second Life have music playing for ambience, or video displayed on an inworld surface.  Use the controls in the upper right of the Viewer window to control the volume of the audio or, if you like, to turn it off entirely by de-selecting the box to the right.

The Pause button to the left of the main volume control button allows you to start or stop streaming videos or media.  You can cover your mouse over any streaming media playing inworld for additional controls.

Mouse over any inworld surface displaying video or other media to show special media controls.

Finding cool stuff to see and do

Click Destinations to see the Second Life Destination Guide.  Click on a category, then click on a destination in that category to teleport there immediately.

Go to http://secondlife.com/destinations/ to see more categories and destinations. 

Doing more

Once you become familiar with walking, flying, and the other basic functions, you may want to try:

• Using voice chat

• Making friends

• Seeing nearby people and friends

• Using profiles

Using voice chat

Tired of typing?  You can use voice chat to talk to nearby people, if they've also enabled voice chat. You'll need to set up a headset or speakers and a microphone in order for voice chat to work.  Using a headset avoids annoying echoes of your own voice.

Generally, it's best to connect your audio devices before you start Second Life.  After you have connected your headset (or speakers and microphone), you may need to configure your sound devices.  To do this, choose Me > Preferences > Sound & Media.  You'll be able to select your input and output devices and change your volume setting.

Once you have configured your sound devices, simply click Speak to speak to those nearby.  Click it again to turn off your microphone.

If you're having trouble getting voice chat to work, see Voice chat FAQ. You can also visit the special region Voice Echo Canyon to safely test voice chat -- the region will play your voice back to you, but no one else will hear you speak, allowing you to test how you sound without having to ask other people.

Note: Some regions disable voice chat.  In these areas, the Speak button will be dimmed, and you won't be able to use voice chat.

Voice chat dots

You can tell if voice is enabled and working properly because you'll see a small white dot floating above your name tag, as shown below. If other people have voice enabled, they will have voice dots as well.

Making friends

To make someone your friend, mouse over their avatar, click the  and choose View Full Profile, then click the Add Friend button.  This person will receive a friendship request: if they accept it, then they will be on your friends list, and you will be on theirs.

How to accept or decline a friendship offer

When someone else offers you friendship, a dialog box appears in the lower-right corner of your screen.

If you click Accept, your new friend receives on-screen notification that you have accepted the friendship offer.

If you click Decline to cancel the offer, the other person receives a notification that you declined the friendship offer.

Tip: Strike up a conversation or have some interaction before asking someone to be your friend—it's good manners!

Seeing nearby people and friends

Click the People button to open the People window, which has four tabs:

• NEARBY shows everyone within 100m of you.

• MY FRIENDS shows your friends list, with those currently online shown first.

• MY GROUPS shows information on your Second Life groups, which are like clubs.  See Groups overview for more information.

• RECENT shows everyone with whom you recently communicated via instant message or group chat.

In all of these tabs, a person's name appears dimmed if they are not currently online.

Mouse over a person's name for additional options:

• Click   to see more information about the person; then click View full profile for more options.

The mini-map in the NEARBY tab shows a bird's eye view of the area you're in; the yellow dot shows your location, and the green dots represent other people. 

Zoom in and out with your mouse wheel or right-click the map for more options.

Using profiles

Click Me > Profile to edit your profile.  Use your profile to express your personality and interests.  You can also share things with your friends and see things they share with you, similar to social networking sites.

To view someone else's profile, mouse over their avatar, click , then click View full profile.  You'll be able to see the things they have allowed based on their privacy settings.

To configure your privacy settings:

• Click Me > Profile

• Click Edit Profile to customize your profile settings.

• Click the Privacy tab.

Tip: Want to add a profile picture?  You'll need to save a snapshot to your PC first, or you can upload an existing snapshot.  Adding a Profile picture is a great way to show off your avatar.  (Remember, profile pictures must be General maturity!)

Moving on

Once you've mastered the basic skills covered in this article, you're ready to move on to learn the full richness of the Second Life experience. There's no limit to the possibilities of what you might discover and who you might meet. Most importantly, have fun!

For more learning and tutorials, check out the Second Life YouTube channel for our series called Second Life University, as well as interviews, tip videos, and more.

Overview of groups

Groups provide a way for you to socialize, share interests, and collaborate with others on projects. With a Basic membership you can belong to as many as 50 groups at one time. Plus members can join up to 55 groups, while Premium accounts may belong to as many as 80 groups, and Premium Plus members can belong to a whopping 150 groups.  

Regardless of how many groups you belong to, you may have only one active group at a time. Your active group determines the title displayed by default above your avatar name inworld, as well as certain inworld functions like scripted objects or land parcel settings being able to tell that you belong to a certain group.

Note: If you choose to downgrade to a different account membership, you can keep your existing number of active group memberships. However, if you wish to join any new groups and currently belong to more than your new membership level allows, you will have to leave some of your active groups in order to join a new one.

Within a group, members can be given specific roles which have their own special abilities. With the right role abilities, group members:

• Can participate in group text chat and voice chat sessions with others in the group. See Group communication.

• Receive group notices to others in the group; certain members have the right to send notices, if they have the required ability. See Working with group notices.

• Can receive group L$ dividends and pay group L$ liabilities (like the charge for a group's land to show in the Search index). Any Linden dollars paid to the group are paid out evenly to all eligible group members each day. See Group dividends and liabilities.

• Can jointly have ownership permissions on parcels of land, with multiple members making a contribution to help pay for the land's cost. See Group-owned land.

• Can jointly operate & edit objects deeded to the group.

Access to land parcels may be restricted by group membership. Also, scripted objects may be usable only by members of specific groups.

This article provides an introduction to groups primarily for group members. For more on groups, and for information for group owners and managers, see Creating, managing, moderating, and disbanding groups.

Basic concepts: roles, titles, and abilities

Each group has a set of roles that can be assigned to members. Each role has an associated title and set of abilities that determine what members in that role can do. One person can have multiple roles in a group.

By default, all groups start with three roles:

• Owners: Group owners have full control over their group, and have access to all group abilities. This role can't be deleted, edited, or hidden. The person who creates the group is initially the owner. Default title is "Owner."

• Officers: Officers have more abilities than regular members, such as the ability to invite others to the group or eject members. Default title is "Officer."

• Everyone: All members in the group have this role that defines baseline abilities. Default title is "Member."

Note: The ability to change roles, titles, role visibility, and abilities is itself an ability. The group owner always has this and all other abilities. 

Titles

The title of your role in your currently active group is shown by default above your display name inworld. For information on how to change your group title, see Controlling group titles.

Abilities

The abilities of your roles determine what you can do in a group. There is a wide range of abilities available. The owner role always has all abilities. Abilities are provided to control group membership, roles, parcel management and object management.

For more information, see Managing abilities.

Active group

Although you may belong to many groups, you have only one active group at any one time. Your currently active group determines, for example, the title displayed above your name tag. See Changing your active group and title for more information.

Open and closed groups

There are two basic types of groups:,

• Open groups are available for anyone to join if they wish.

• Closed groups require an invitation from an existing group officer to join.

Either type of group may have a Linden dollar cost to join.

Group visibility in your profile

By default, others can see the groups to which you belong in your profile.

To hide a group so that it does not appear in your profile:

1. Choose Communicate > Groups or right-click on yourself and choose My Groups.

2. Click the group you want to hide 

3. Click Group Profile.

4. Deselect Show in my profile.

5. Click Save.

 Joining a group

There are two ways to join a group:

• A group member can invite you. This is the only way you can join a closed group.

• You can join an open group on your own initiative.

Being invited to join a group

You must be invited to join a closed group; you may also be invited to join an open group or you can join on your own.

When you are invited to join a group, a notification appears in your Viewer. If you wish to join, click Accept. If not, click Decline.

Tip: If you do not know the Resident who sent you the group invitation or want to learn more about the group before accepting, click the Info button to see the group's profile.

Finding and joining an open group

To search for a group to join:

1. Click Search. 
   The Second Life Search window opens.

2. Select Groups from the dropdown menu next to the Search button

3. Next to Maturity, check or uncheck the boxes to filter your results as desired.

   Important: You must be at least 18 years old to view Adult-rated search results. See Age-restricted content for more information.

4. Enter your search criteria and click the Search button.

5. Browse through the search results. When you find a group that interests you, click the link for details.

6. Click More Info to bring up the People window, which displays the group's profile information and indicates the enrollment fee (if any) in L$.

7. To join, click JOIN NOW! 
   A message appears asking you to confirm that you wish to join. Click Yes.

Inviting someone to join a group

Note: To be able to invite others to join a group, you must have a role with the Invite People to this Group ability. Depending on your role, you may not have this ability.

To invite one person nearby inworld

To invite someone to a group to which you belong:

1. Right-click their avatar and choose Invite to Group. 

   • The Groups window opens, displaying all the groups to which you have permission to invite people.

2. Select the desired group

3. Click OK.

The person will get a group invitation.

To invite multiple people

To invite several people into your group at once:

1. Choose Communicate > Groups or right-click yourself and choose My Groups...

2. Click the desired group. 

3. Click Group Profile.

4. Click the Roles tab.

5. Click Invite. If you don't have the required ability, the button will be disabled.

6. Click Open Resident Chooser

7. Select a person one of these ways: 
   • In the Search tab, type in the text field, then click Go. Click on the desired person and click Select. 
   • In the Friends tab, choose a friend, then click Select. 
   • In the Near Me tab, click on a person then click Select.

8. Repeat for each person you want to invite, then click Close.

9. Click Send Invitations.

Controlling group titles

By default, you see others' group titles above their display names inworld. To turn off the display of others' group titles,

1. Choose Me > Preferences.

2. Click the General tab.

3. Under Name tags, deselect Group titles.

4. Click OK.

Changing your active group and title

The title associated with your role in  your active group appears to others above your display name. Whenever you join a group, that group automatically becomes active. Your active group can also affect certain permissions inworld, such as the ability to create objects on group-owned land.

To change your active group:

1. Choose Communicate  > Groups or right-click on your avatar and choose My Groups.

2. Right-click on the name of the group you wish to make active.

3. Click Activate.

4. The group name changes to bold to indicate that it is active.

Changing your role's title 

Each role in a group has an associated title. If you have more than one role in the same group, you can switch your active title within the group:

1. Choose Communicate > Groups or right-click on your avatar and choose My Groups.

2. Click the name of your active group.

3. Click Group Profile.

4. In the General tab, choose the desired title from the My title dropdown list.

5. Click Save.

Group communication

As a member of a group, you can converse with other group members, both using text chat and voice chat. The ability "moderator" provides special capabilities to control group voice and text chat conversations. For more information, see Group moderation.

Group IMs

To start a group IM session with all group members currently inworld:

1. Choose Communicate > Groups or right-click yourself and choose My Groups...

2. Double-click the desired group.
   The conversations window opens.

3. Type text that will appear to all group members. 

For more information, see Group IM sessions.

Group voice calls

When you start a group voice chat call, you will be disconnected from local voice chat. That is, you will no longer hear voice from people nearby and they will not hear you. Those in a group voice call can hear each other regardless of their location inworld.

To start a group voice call, follow the above steps then click Call Group.

Or to start a group call directly:

1. Choose Communicate > Groups or right-click yourself and choose My Groups...

2. Right-click the name of the group and choose Call.

For more information, see Group voice chat.

Overview

Why buy land?

Owning land can be one of the most exciting and rewarding experiences in Second Life.  Once you become a landowner, you truly become a part of the Second Life community, and can create and keep things inworld that will be there when you return.

Your own land is a space you can customize however you want, and a canvas where your creations can come to life. Land in Second Life is a place to call home, where you can invite friends to hang out, hold events, and more. You can use many of the virtual items you purchase in Second Life—like clothes, accessories and cars—anywhere. But if you purchase a house, a garden, or an entire forest, you're going to need somewhere to put it: your own plot of land!

Types of land

Mainland

Mainland refers to places located on the Linden Lab-owned and operated mainland continents. These continents are made up of regions connected to one another, with roads, waterways and railroads that run between them, which make them particularly well-suited to exploring in vehicles like sailboats and aircraft. Within these Linden-owned regions, the land is divided into parcels (or smaller pieces) which eligible members can own for themselves and use for businesses, homes, and more.

You must be a Plus, Premium or Premium Plus member to own a parcel on the mainland, but most areas are open for visitors and exploration. Look for the blue Infohub (ℹ️) logo on the World Map to find a public meeting space to start your explorations.

Private estates and regions

Private estates and the regions in them are operated by Residents who pay for the entire region directly to Linden Lab. In private regions, the owner has more control over access, appearance, and the content inside the region. Private regions are typically standalone or connected to other private regions, allowing for the highest degree of privacy and customization of experience in Second Life.

Private regions come in a few different types, largely differing based on their capacity for content and their intended use. For more information, see Private Regions.

Land terminology

There are a lot of different terms for land in Second Life, which can be a bit confusing. Here are a few of the more common terms and what they usually mean:

• A parcel is a piece of land within a region. It can be as small as a 16 square meter of grass or as large as the entire region's border (65,536 square meters, or 256 meters per side of the map square). Different parcels within the same region can have different owners, access settings, music stations, or rules about who can rez content on the land.

• A region is a uniquely named square on the Second Life map. They might be owned by Linden Lab as part of the mainland continent, or individually by a Resident as a private region. Every region exists in an estate, which is what determines the owner. 

• An estate is an administrative container for regions, much like a country in real life controls a specific piece of land or territory. Estates can have only one region in their jurisdiction, or in the case of the mainland estate owned by Linden Lab it can contain thousands of regions. This is similar to the idea of a country controlling different land areas in real life, with estates acting like a country and regions the land inside the country's possession.

  • For example, the country of Barbados is a single island (region) that is also a country (estate).

  • Compare that to Indonesia, which is made up of 17,504 islands (regions) in a single country (estate).

  • In these examples, the islands in the countries share common laws, currency, and government officials -- much like the different regions in an estate share an owner, estate managers, and selected settings like access.

How to buy land

There are several ways to buy land:

• Buy a parcel on the mainland if you have a Plus, Premium, or Premium Plus membership.  

• Premium and Premium Plus members can receive a free Linden Home, which is a great way to get started with land ownership.  See Linden Homes for more information.

• Buy an entire region (a private island).  

Instead of buying land, you can rent land:

• On a private estate - see Renting land from other Residents.

• On the mainland - see Renting a region for a special event.

Buying mainland

Most land on the mainland is owned by other Residents, who may choose to sell their land if they like. Residents can set the price for their land parcels by setting it for sale in the World > About Land interface, and when they make their land available for sale it will appear in Search.

To search for land for sale by another Resident:

• Open the World > Search menu, or click the 🔎 icon on the toolbar in the Viewer.

• Select the Land to buy or rent tab on the left menu.

• Select your preferred options for your search:

  • You can choose to look for land on the Mainland, on a full or homestead Private Region, or for mainland available for Auction.

  • You can choose to look for land to Buy or to Rent.

    • Private region offerings are considered rentals; the owner of the private region always fully owns the land inside it, but may choose to rent parcels in their private region to others. Please be sure to read the Covenant of any region you buy or rent land in, and be aware that rental land on private regions is available by the region owner's choice.

  • You can select which region Maturity levels you prefer for your search results.

Linden Lab does not usually set land for direct sale on the mainland. However, there are two special cases in which you can obtain mainland parcels from Linden Lab: 

• Auctions: Linden Lab regularly auctions mainland parcels via Second Life Land Auctions.  Land owned on the mainland may be subject to an additional land use fee (also known as a tier fee), which is a monthly charge in addition to a membership subscription based on how much land you own.

• Abandoned land:  In some special cases, Linden Lab sells abandoned mainland parcels to individual Residents. For more information, see Abandoned land.  Remember that you can buy land from your fellow Residents, and if you want a whole region to yourself, you can buy a Private Region from the Land Store.

Land owned by Governor Linden named "Protected Land" will not generally be terraformed or sold to Residents.

Requirements

To purchase mainland land in Second Life, you must have a Plus, Premium, or Premium Plus membership with current payment information on file and your account must be in good standing. You may also be required to have a clean disciplinary record.

Plus members receive 512 square meters of land allowance included with their membership. Premium members receive 1024 square meters of land allowance (tier) included with their membership, meaning that they incur no extra land use fees for owning mainland as long as they own 1024 square meters or less.  For more information, see Land tier.  A Premium account also provides many other benefits.  For more information, see Premium membership.

Premium Plus members receive 2048 square meters of land allowance (tier) included with their membership.

How to buy mainland

Once you find the land you want and have signed up for an eligible membership (like Premium), buying it is easy:

1. Right-click the parcel you want to purchase.

2. Choose About Land.

3. Click the Buy Land button.

4. Review the purchase information.

5. Click OK.

Buying Private Regions

A private region is a 256m x 256m piece of virtual land -- an entire square of the map with a unique name that a single region owner controls. Regions run on a single server and have their own set of controls beyond those provided to mainland parcel owners.

For more information see:

• Private Regions: Buying Private Regions

• Managing private regions

Requirements

By purchasing a Private Region, you are agreeing to pay the initial setup fee, plus monthly service fees for as long as you own the region. You are also agreeing to a restocking fee if you cancel your order.  You will be charged the setup fee once the order is completed. Monthly fees begin 30 days from the date you complete your purchase.

Residents don't require a special membership or a subscription like Plus or Premium to purchase a private region; Basic members are welcome to do so. Private Region owners receive Concierge level service from our Support team in order to assist with any questions or issues they might have about their region.

Additional tips

The following tips will help you purchase land wisely and confidently:

• Make sure you know exactly what you're purchasing! Press Ctrl-Alt-Shift-P on your keyboard to toggle parcel boundary lines.

• Right-click the parcel to bring up the About Land window, which shows you the land's Area in square meters.

• Look at the About Land window's General tab to see if objects are included in the sale.

• Check the Parcel land capacity entry in the About Land window's Objects tab. This indicates how much land impact the land can support before it stops allowing new objects to enter..

Important: If you don't own the land yet, the Region capacity entry is not a measure of the object usage you will receive!

• If the Advanced menu is active, try hiding objects by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Shift-1 on your keyboard to make sure there isn't a hidden "hole" in the property that you are unwittingly purchasing with the rest of the land.

• Make sure you're happy with the overall shape of the land. Most land in Second Life can only be raised 4m above or below its original position, and the previous owner may have already reached that limit. 

Land allowance (tier)

The mainland is a continent of conjoined regions that can be split into smaller parcels, and many Residents own parcels of different sizes spread out across several different regions. Because of this, land ownership is charged not based on a flat rate (like a private region) but on how many square meters a Resident owns simultaneously, billed in increasing levels (often called 'tiers').

For example, owning up to 1,024 square meters of land is included in a standard Premium membership. If you buy a little more land and now own 1,100 square meters of land, you've moved up to the next tier level -- between 1,025m and 1,536m of land. Because you've purchased more than the included land allowance, a monthly land fee will be charged to your account. 

Each tier level has a set price, whether you have just a little land over the limit or if you're using every square meter allowed by that level. 1,025m of land costs the same as 1535m of land, in terms of monthly land allowance fee.

Land allowance (often simply referred to as "tier) is a key concept of Second Life land ownership.  "Tier" refers to the maximum amount of land you can own on the mainland before your land fee goes up to the next level, measured in square meters (m²).  

Plus members receive 512m²  included in their membership subscription. While they can't receive a Linden Home, Plus members can purchase parcels on the mainland as well as take part in Second Life Land Auctions.

A standard Premium membership includes 1024m² of tier, which can be used for a free Linden Home or to own other land elsewhere on the mainland. 

Premium Plus members receive 2048m of land allowance included in their membership fees. Please note, every avatar is limited to one (1) Linden Home per avatar, regardless of their available land allowance.

For the most up to date information on current mainland pricing and fees, please see our Mainland Pricing and Fees page.

Land use fees

If you want to own more land than you have available at your current land allowance level, you must upgrade to the next level up. You can use the Land Use Fees page to update your tier level, or in some cases you can simply purchase a larger piece of land and (with your approval) the system will move you to the next tier level as part of the purchase.

You can choose to increase your available Land Allowance (Tier) on the Land Use Fees page to purchase more land or acquire more allowance to donate to a group.

The Buy Land interface warns you before purchasing land if your monthly fees will increase. Purchasing this land will increase your next land billing, even if you no longer own the land at that time.

Upgrading to a higher tier will increase your monthly land use fees, but you will be able to acquire more land for your use or to donate to one of your groups. Before you purchase a parcel of land, check the purchase window carefully. The system will warn you if purchasing a parcel will increase your monthly land fee. Land use tiers and pricing are shown on the Land Use Fees page.

You can manage your land use fees and see which level you're at on the Account Dashboard at SecondLife.com.

If you find that you're using quite a lot of land allowance, you can continue to increase your allowed holdings to meet your needs. If you sell the land and move back to a lower level of land usage, the system automatically reduces you to that lower level's fee -- but please be advised that land allowance that is donated to a group is not automatically lowered if the land owned by the group is sold. Anyone contributing land allowance to a group will continue to contribute until they manually reduce their donation. Please see Group-owned land for more information.

Exceptions

Please note the following exceptions to the general rules stated above:

• You can own a private estate without having any monthly land use fees; private estates and parcels in private regions do not count towards land use calculations and do not require a membership subscription, because a private region owner is charged at a flat rate for the entire region each month in advance.

• Groups receive a 10% bonus in land allowance when members donate land allowance to that group. For example, if group members contribute 1000m of land allowance in donations, the group can own up to 1100m of land (10% of 1000m is 100m).  See Group-owned land for more information.

• Some Resident-owned private estates have their own distinct land rental systems which are not part of Linden Lab's land use fees. If you are renting from such an estate, contact the owner or another appropriate Resident directly for assistance.

Finding land to buy

The inworld Search tool enables you to browse and filter a comprehensive database of real estate listings. Simply follow these steps:

1. Open the World > Search menu, or click the 🔎 icon on the toolbar in the Viewer.

2. Select the Land to buy or rent tab on the left menu.

3. Select your preferred options for your search:

   • You can choose to look for land on the Mainland, on a full or homestead Private Region, or for mainland available for Auction.

   • You can choose to look for land to Buy or to Rent.

     • ⚠️ Private region offerings are always considered rentals; the owner of the private region always fully owns the land inside it, but may choose to rent parcels in their private region to others. Please be sure to read the Covenant of any region you buy or rent land in, and be aware that rental land on private regions is available by the region owner's choice.

   • You can select which region Maturity levels you prefer for your search results.

4. Add any keywords you're interested in, like "waterfront" or "snow", or leave the Optional Keywords blank.

5. Click Search.

6. Use the filters on the left to adjust your results, including the Area of the parcel (size) or the Price in Linden Dollars (L$).

7. Click on the column names to sort by Name, Type, L$ Price, Area, or L$/m (Linden dollars per square meter)

8. Click on a listing to view more details. When you find a property that interests you, click Teleport to go explore it!

Second Life's Auctions also list land parcels up for sale to the highest bidder. Auction parcels are priced in Linden Dollars (L$).

Land sales in Private Regions

The mechanics of buying and selling land in a Private Region are very similar to the process on the mainland. However, there are a few key differences that buyers and sellers should take into account when making a land transaction in a Private Region.

Similarities

• As the seller, the Private Region owner can split parcels of the region and set them for sale.

• The technical steps for buying the land are identical.

Differences

• 'Buying' a parcel in a private region puts that parcel in your name, but you must pay rent to the region owner to maintain the land. Check the rental rates of a parcel before you purchase it!

  • Private regions typically have a scripted rental system which Residents must pay in order to keep the land they've acquired. Parcel rentals on private regions may be rented by the month, week, day, or in some cases hours -- a private region owner has complete control over how they prefer to charge tenants for land in their region.

• Parcels in Private Regions are governed by covenants. A covenant is a kind of contract, defined by the owner of the Private Region, to which you must agree before buying the land. It may outline details such as local theme, rental fees, architectural regulations, and rules of behavior.

• Land purchased in a Private Region does not count against your land use tier or require a Premium membership, however the region owner will typically charge you a fee for continuing use of the land (rent).

• The Private Region owner may evict you from your parcel in a Private Region at any time. Private Region owners have absolute power over their estates and are within their rights to reclaim land as they see fit. Make sure to read your region's covenant closely for terms of use before you acquire your parcel.

• Private Region owners have use of the Region/Estate window which includes such region access options as:

  • Access restricted to Residents based on payment status

  • Region maturity can be set to General, Moderate, or Adult

Object land capacity

Every region has a finite capacity for content -- that is, there's a limit to how many objects a region can hold that's determined by the type of the region (a full region versus a homestead, for example) and the hardware running that region. The limit for how much content a parcel can hold is typically based on its size -- the large a parcel is, the larger percentage of a region's content budget it can hold. Objects in Second Life have a land impact cost based on the object's complexity, size, and characteristics.

This parcel content limit is called object land capacity (sometimes referred to by its old name of 'prim limit' -- before mesh, all objects were created out of 'primitive' objects like cubes and spheres linked together). With prims, a chair made from four linked cubes would have a land impact of four (one for each cube). The corresponding calculation for mesh objects are different, since they're complex and can't be measured as simply as a stack of prims. For more information on how mesh objects contribute to a parcel's available object capacity, see Calculating land impact.

More than one parcel in a region

All parcels belonging to the same owner (or group) in the same region share their land capacity.  You can view this represented as Region capacity in the About Land window. In this way, it is possible for the Parcel land impact number to be higher than the Parcel land capacity number.

To view the About Land window, stand on a parcel and select World > About Land. For information about objects on the land, select the Objects tab in the About Land window.

Vehicles and parcel limits

Objects that are Selected / sat upon do not count against the Parcel land capacity. This allows vehicles to pass freely through parcels that might not otherwise be able to support them. However, objects that are sat upon or selected (for editing) do count against a region's total capacity. If a Region is completely full of content, you cannot drive a vehicle into it.

Object bonus factor

In Private Regions, the owner may set an Object Bonus to increase the percentage of a region's full capacity that the parcels inside can use. This setting multiplies the capacity each parcel can support by the Bonus Factor. It is important to note that this does not increase the maximum capacity supported by the Region, which means that not all parcels in the Region will be able to reach their listed maximum capacity.

Some areas of the mainland have an object bonus set, and are sometimes referred to as "double prim" or "double object capacity" land. These regions -- like the Linden Homes on the Bellisseria continent or the Resident-owned parcels of the Bay City regions -- have extra Linden-owned parks, roads, and empty land, which allows Resident-owned parcels to use the unused land impact instead.

Introduction

Linden Homes are ready-to-move-in homes in themed communities that are available only to Plus, Premium and Premium Plus account members. Plus, Premium and Premium Plus members can get a free Linden Home, in addition to the other benefits of premium membership.  For more information, see Premium membership.

Certain styles and themes of Linden Homes may only be available to certain membership types. For example, Ranch, Mediterranean and Thousand Island style homes are available exclusively for Premium Plus subscribers. Plus members may select from existing themes which offer 512m size parcels, including Sakura, Newbrooke, and Camper style homes.

Features

Linden Homes contain one or more of the following features, depending on the type of home:

• Touch entry - Left-click the front door to enter and exit your home.

• Touch lighting - Click the lights to toggle them on and off.

• Working fireplace - Click the fireplace to toggle a fire on and off.

You'll also get a control panel that enables you to manage your home accessories and to change the textures used in your home. For more information, see Using the control panel.

Themes

Bellisseria

The second generation of Linden Homes -- the New Linden Homes -- started to become available in 2019. They occupy a large continent named Bellisseria with close to 1500 regions of residential land and navigable waterways, a network of roads, and community areas, with more being created all the time. These new homes may be located in the mountains or along the shore or in a rolling landscape of low hills and river valleys.

Unlike the first generation of Linden Homes, which offered themed areas on separate Regions, the Bellisserian homes blend themes across the entire continent. Depending on the theme you choose to live in, your home’s parcel may be either 1024m² or 512m². Your house might overlook houseboats along the ocean or might be inland in a traditional suburban neighborhood. Wherever you live, you will be within range of recreational and shopping areas and will be able to travel around the continent by car or boat if you wish.

If you'd like to learn more about the Bellisserian community and available options, tutorials, and more, visit the BelliHub region to get a close-up look at all of the current Linden Home themes and models. 

Traditional homes

Traditional suburban homes are arranged along tree-lined streets on 1024m² parcels. The homes are one and two-story buildings with shingle roofs, and in most models, a porch or patio area. A typical home has a two or more large rooms on the main floor and may have one or two upstairs. As described in a later section of this guide, you may use the House Controller on your parcel to choose among the styles pictured here, and you may use the house controller to change colors and details both inside and on the outside of the house.

A traditional home is set back from the sidewalk and may have a hedge, a wall, or a low fence to set it apart from its neighbors. You may add to the planting or other landscaping elements on the parcel .

Traditional homes are all within a convenient distance from communal park areas where you can join your friends for picnics, sports, or family activities. Some communal areas offer a dining or dance area, or a pool where you can relax.

Houseboats

With a houseboat home, you can enjoy life in coves and inlets around the perimeter of the continent or the large nearby island, or along rivers or around the large bay in the center of the continent. You cannot travel on a houseboat, but each houseboat parcel has room for you to moor your own sailboat or other watercraft. All water areas around the New Linden Homes continent are navigable and public.

The houseboat models have large rooms with a high ceiling and skylights, plus a deck area outside for you to relax or entertain on.

Most houseboats are on 16 m x 64 m water parcels. Some are on square 32 m x 32 m parcels. Therefore, all have an area of 1024m². All are accessible by open water. You may also walk easily from one place to another, along wooden docks that divide the parcels, or along sandbars and spits from the mainland.

Houseboats are all within convenient reach of community areas and cultural venues (lighthouses, beaches, and community buildings where you may gather with friends).

Campers

Experience the country life while you sit back and relax in your own Linden Homes camping trailer.

Spacious trailers -- 8 different models in all -- are all set on 512m² parcels in beautiful wooded regions. Depending on the model you choose, your home can be a sleek, aerodynamically designed trailer, or one that looks more like a Roma caravan, or one of several other designs. 

Victorian Homes

Be prepared for late 19th century living when you choose a spacious Victorian-themed home. All homes in this theme are on 32 x 32m parcels and sited in the sort of small community that would have been new 150 years ago -- complete with cobblestone streets and wrought iron street lamps. By using your House Controller, you may select any of eight models, featuring signature Victorian features like turrets, expansive porches, and elegant bay windows.

Log Homes

The log homes are your opportunity to enjoy comfortable country living. Nestled in forested hills and valleys, these upscale log homes bring you close to nature and still let you enjoy the clean, modern lines of a house that you can live in year-round. Eight styles each offer high ceilings and both upstairs and downstairs rooms. Other amenities include balconies, large windows, and a porch.

Stilt Homes

The stilt homes offer upscale living along the coasts of Bellisseria. Homes are raised on stilts, well above sea level, in the style of many shoreline homes in the Southeastern USA. Some homes are placed along or very near to the beach. Others are over water, attached to wooden piers. Others still are freestanding over water, only accessible by boat. Enjoy the luxury of home on a full-sized 1024m² parcel and access to nearby shared public recreation areas.

You may choose any one of the four one- or two-story styles from your house controller, regardless of where your stilt home parcel lies. Each has a large deck, where you can enjoy an evening meal or watch the waves. 

Chalets

Chalet theme homes are modeled after stylized European alpine wood-timbered houses (fachwerkhaus), of a type that you might expect to find in mountains of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Slovenia, Croatia, or northern Italy. These are not rustic buildings, but contemporary homes ready for 21st century living. There are four basic models, named Reizend, Edelweiss, Matterhorn, and Alpenrose. Each is also available in an open-plan version that looks the same as one of the basic models but has fewer interior walls, so that you can add your own walls to create a customized floor plan. The open plan versions are named Ravensburg, Eikelen, Moritzburg, and Albus.

Fantasy Homes

The Fantasy theme is designed to appeal to residents with a flair for the magical and mystic side of Second Life. Homes are situated on an isolated subcontinent, accessible only by teleportation or through the misty seaway from the coast at Rigamarole. There, you can wander among fanciful giant mushrooms and glowing crystals or take a silent ride on a huge moth. Streets and regional parks are full of bioluminescent trees that come alive after dark with a fairy-like glow, as do the streets, the rocks, and even the roof of your home. You can imagine yourself in a world populated by faeries, wizards, and mythical creatures, a place where anything is possible, including life in a mystical treehouse.

There are six basic models, named Amberbrooke, Fairybrooke, Mistbrooke, Pixiebrooke, Rosebrooke, and Stonebrooke. Each will also be available in an open-plan version that looks the same as one of the basic models but has fewer interior walls, so that you can add your own walls to create a customized floor plan. The open plan versions are named Angelspell, Fairyspell, Pixiespell, Moonspell, Ragespell, and Steepspell.

Newbrooke Homes

The Newbrooke theme neighborhoods recall one of the most popular themes in the original Linden Homes regions, the Meadowbrook homes. There are eight house models, each designed with sleek, modern lines and plenty of windows. These are homes for today's suburban lifestyle. As a homeowner, you can customize the exterior of any home by choosing wood, stucco, or metal siding and you can select among preset colors to tint the siding, trim, and brickwork.

Four of the models (Aldridge, Bradbury, Coniston, and Heaton) are designed to fit on 1024m² parcels. You may choose any of the other four (Denver, Ender, Faraday, and Gatewood) for either a 1024m² parcel or a smaller 512m² parcel.

Sakura Homes

The word “sakura” means “cherry blossom” in Japanese – an appropriate name for this part of Bellisseria, where there are cherry trees everywhere you look. When you live or visit here, you are stepping into neighborhoods inspired by Japanese communities, a mix of modern architecture that respects classical design concepts. Homes are set on land that is gently rolling – although occasionally surprisingly high – and full of small parks and canals.

Homes have traditional tile roofs and stucco exterior walls with wood trim. There are eight basic models also named after flowers in Japanese: Shion, Ajisai, Renge, Kaneshon, Kosumosu, Tenjikubotan, Botan, and Himawari. The first four of those models are designed for 1024m² parcels; the other four may be rezzed on either 1024m² or 512m² parcels. In addition, each of the eight basic models is also available in an “open plan” version that has fewer interior walls, so you can customize the interior space easily. The open plan versions are named Sumire, Asagao, Rabenda, Kuchinashi, Kinmokusei, Tsubaki, Benibara, and Haibisukasu. Altogether, then, you may choose among 16 homes.

Ranch Homes

The ranch theme is your invitation to step into life on the grasslands of central North America. This is farm country, a land of rolling prairie and big sky. It’s a place where you can imagine raising wheat or corn or soybeans and having a few cattle, a horse or two, and a flock of chickens. You might have a barn stocked with hay bales and a tractor and harvest machinery. Or, perhaps, you could have the large garden for vegetables and flowers that you always wanted. 

Ranch homes are designed for Premium Plus members. They each are on 32m x 64m (2048m²) parcels. These are wood frame homes with wide porches and shingle roofs and wide eaves. All are designed as open plan homes, so there is at least one large room that you can divide with add-on walls to create your own floor plan. Some styles are small – meant for simple country living – and some are larger two-story homes that are suited for people who need room to spread out.

Mediterranean Homes

 Get ready for life in SL’s version of one of the most popular global environments, the Mediterranean climate. In the real world, this is a warm, low humidity climate found near mid-latitude coastlines, and the same is true in Bellisseria. Regions have names that remind you of the west coast of the Americas and around the Mediterranean Sea. Here, the soil is sandy and the plants are a mix of grasses, cacti, trees and shrubs adapted to land that sees sunshine most of the year. Pastel colors are dominated by roses and ochres, and the primary building materials are stone and adobe.

Mediterranean homes are designed for Premium Plus members. They each are on 32 m x 64 m (2048m²) parcels with ample room for you to create gardens and recreational space. There are four basic home styles, available with up to eleven rooms or in an open plan version that allows you to design your own floor plan. They have tile roofs, large windows and doors, and – in half of the homes – a new feature, functional fireplaces that you can rez or derez as you wish.

Thousand Island Homes

 If you love the sea, this theme’s for you. Six floating home models are built in a modern tiki style with thatch roofs and plenty of windows. Another two are rocky, one-room grottos on the seafloor, designed for merfolk or those who just enjoy extremely humid environments.

These homes also have some new features. They can be rotated through 90 degrees in any direction, giving you the ability to pick which direction you want your home to face as you set it up. You can look out your front door at the tropical sunset, or you can turn the house to face a friendly neighbor. As in other themes, you can customize the appearance of the home with familiar control panel functions. You’ll find that new technology has made the custom color option more versatile, though. You don't have to keep the color RGB values on sticky notes any more, ready to reapply when you rez a different house. Now, any custom colors that a parcel owner creates are stored in the "system" (actually in the mailbox) and are automatically made available if the owner rezzes a new house on the parcel.

Perhaps the most unusual features in this theme are the parcels themselves. You have two options: shallow (4m deep) parcels are nestled against an island for added privacy; deep water (17.5m deep) ones are meant for mer homes and for people who prefer the open sea. They are all 2048m², designed for Premium Plus residents. These are not just spacious, though. They are round, unlike the square ones in other themes. To help you keep your things within your parcel, we've added an easy to use tool to the house controller that will show you just how far you can build, park your boat or frolic in the water outside your house.

Aspen Ridge Homes

The Aspen Ridge homes are set among mixed hardwood and coniferous trees, the sort of biome that is associated with northern temperate woodlands outside of Second Life. As you explore, you’ll find abundant ferns, shrubbery, and wildflowers among the trees in this theme’s rolling hills and rugged peaks. This is a wonderful place for hiking and horseback riding.

Aspen Ridge's most striking feature is the changing of the seasons. Unlike most Linden Home regions, which feature static weather and seasons, Aspen Ridge environments change from season to season to reflect spring, summer, autumn and winter. Aspen Ridge homes are located on 1024m² parcels and are available for Premium & Premium Plus members.

Ridgewood Enclave Homes

This theme follows the Brutalist approach to architecture: bold and grounded, fusing sculptural form with natural integration. It celebrates the expressive character of concrete while introducing natural textures and filtered light. This vision for Linden Homes delivers a modernism that feels both permanent and peaceful. It should appeal to those who want design without excess; it’s ideal for artists, architects, modernists, and minimalists. Inside, the homes provide a canvas for statement decoration. Outside, their clean silhouettes and muted tones allow them blend naturally with the landscape – a marriage of quiet modern simplicity.

You may choose among six basic home styles and an equal number of open plan models. The walls are raw concrete with wood accents and flooring. Low-gloss textures absorb highlights and offer shadowed areas for creative furnishings and localized lighting. Recessed windows provide gently framed views of the outdoors, and balconies and patios invite you to enjoy the neutral earth-toned landscaping of the Ridgewood Enclave regions. Some house models incorporate planters that can hold vegetation or serve as water features. (See the section below on 'House Control Panels' for more information.) All homes are on 2048 sqm parcels, and are designed for Premium Plus members.

Copperfield Heights Homes

This theme draws on the Craftsman style of architecture that became popular in many North American towns in the mid-20th Century and is still enjoyed there. There’s a familiar comfort in a Craftsman home — a wide porch and front steps that welcome you in, natural wood details that bring warmth indoors, and a layout that makes everyday living easier. Like the Aspen Ridge theme, Copperfield Heights environments change from season to season to reflect spring, summer, autumn and winter.

You may choose among models that fit on a 512 sqm, 1024 sqm, or 2048 sqm parcel, depending on your membership level and your desire for space. There are four models designed for anyone to rez on any parcel, another eight for Premium and Premium Plus members, and a final set of eight available only for Premium Plus. Half of the 1024 and 2048 models are open plan versions, giving you more flexibility for adding your own interior walls to shape living space.

First-generation themes

The original Linden Homes were introduced in 2010, all on 512m² land parcels. While their capacity and customization options were limited compared to current generation Linden Homes, they provided an easy way for Residents to have a home of their own in Second Life. First-generation Linden Homes have limited space and land capacity. Homes in these themes are no longer available. The four original Linden Home styles were:

• Tahoe - Rustic cabin retreats with winding roads among hills and pine forests.

• Elderglen - Fantasy dwellings with winding roads around hills and giant trees.

• Sahreta Osumai - Traditional Japanese homes nestled in picturesque areas with mossy rocks and colorful trees.

• Meadowbrook - California modern suburban homes with decks perfect for barbecues!

First-generation Linden Homes had a land capacity of 175 on a 512 m² parcel and had slightly different guidelines in their covenant. 

Ridgewood Enclave Commercial District

In March 2026, the Ridgewood Enclave Commercial District was added as an option for Premium Plus members who wished to establish commercial businesses and shops on the Bellisseria continent. These exclusive areas are the only place in Bellisseria where commercial activity is permitted. Premium Plus members who are interested in getting started with a commercial property in the commercial district can visit Greenbush Hill to get started. For more information, check out the Ridgewood Enclave Commercial District's information page and our Featured News blog post Shoppers! Look what's coming to Bellisseria!.

Getting your Linden Home

You can get a Linden Home when you sign up for a premium account, upgrade your basic account to premium, or if you already have a premium account and have not claimed your Linden Home yet.

Prerequisites

If you have a Plus, Premium or Premium Plus account and you have at least 512m² available tier then you qualify for a Linden Home.  For example, if you have a new Premium account — you've just joined Second Life as a Premium member or upgraded from a basic account — and haven't changed your land usage, then you have exactly 1024m² of available tier.  

Note: You don't have to use your membership's land allowance for a Linden Home.  You can use it instead towards other mainland purchases or you can contribute it to group tier allocations.  Also, if you abandon your Linden Home, you can use your included land allowance to buy other mainland parcels. 

Checking if you have enough land allowance available

If you don't have any land already in Second Life, then you will always have enough land tier, because each premium account comes with 1024m² of land tier.  There are two ways to check if you have enough available tier:

• Inworld: From the Viewer menus, choose World > My land holdings.... Your available land tier is listed in Available for land purchases.

• Website: If you already own land, then you can also check if you have enough land tier on the Second Life website:

  1. Go to Your Account.

  2. On the left side of the page, click Account Summary.

  3. Find the section called Land Holdings

  4. Available square meters for purchase at your current tier is listed under Available for purchase.

Signing up

The Linden Home registration process offers options for theme, home type, and home name. Once you submit your registration, your selected home is immediately generated on the next available parcel within your selected theme. You cannot request a specific region or parcel location unless you are a Premium Plus member -- please see the Premium Plus FAQ for more information on how to do that.

 If you don't have an account yet:

1. Go to join.secondlife.com.

2. Complete your registration.

3. Upgrade to premium as prompted.

4. Go to Linden Home registration and log in with your Second Life account and password.

 If you have a Basic membership and would like to upgrade:

1. Go to Premium Membership registration and log in with your Second Life account.

2. Follow the account upgrade process.

3. Once your account is upgraded to Premium or Premium Plus Membership, the page will redirect to Linden Home registration.

 Existing subscribing membership accounts

1. Go to Linden Home registration and log in with your Second Life account and password.

2. View the available themed communities and home options within each theme.

3. Click on your preferred home image.

4. Name your home.

5. Click Next.

6. Read the Terms and Conditions and check the box agreeing to them.

7. Click Accept.

8. Review your Linden Home information on the confirmation page.

9. Click Go to your Home or use the SLurl provided.

Note: Confirmation is sent to the email address you provided to register your Second Life account.

Troubleshooting

If you didn't receive your email confirmation, be sure to check your email application's spam folder.

It's also possible there has been an error in the email process, and your Linden Home is ready and waiting for you. If your Linden Home is ready, a landmark is sent to you inworld. If there appears to be such a problem, head to the Support Portal and submit a ticket. Identify whether the email did not go through and your home is actually available, or whether there was a problem with the registration process overall.

Finding your Linden Home

Your welcome email will provide the location of  your Linden Home.  If you lost or did not receive your welcome email, then there are two ways to locate your Linden Home:

• On the Second Life website:

  1. Log in using your Second Life username and password. 

  2. Go to your Account Dashboard.

  3. On the left, click Land Manager.

  4. Click My Mainland.

  5. Look for the name of the Linden Home that you chose when you registered. Click the link in the Location column to teleport there. 

• Inworld:

  1. Login to Second Life with the Second Life Viewer

  2. Choose World > My land holdings... 

  3. Select the parcel that matches your chosen Linden Home name.

  4. Click Teleport.
     You will be teleported to your Linden Home. 

Abandoning or changing your Linden Home

To change your choice of Linden Home type, you must abandon your current Linden Home and then register for a new one.

To abandon your Linden Home:

1. Choose World > About Land and click the General tab.

2. Click Abandon Land. 
   After you confirm your choice, the land is removed from your account.

Now if you wish, you can register for another Linden Home.

Warning: Please use this reasonably: if you abandon and choose a new Linden Home five times in 24 hours, you are temporarily blocked from choosing another. You will need to wait 24 hours before registering again.

Enjoying your Linden Home

What you can do

You can:

• Decorate your home with furniture or other items from the Second Life Marketplace. Please see the Covenant for your Linden Home region for more details.

• Your partner or friends can help you decorate as well. Linden Home parcels work just like any other parcel of land in that regard; who can rez objects on your land depends on the About Land settings.  See Managing land for more information.

• Customize textures used in your Linden Home via the control panel.  See Using the control panel.

Covenant and restrictions

Linden Home regions are special communities, and as such, they have special rules that govern them which are available in the region's covenant. The covenant describes how you can use Linden Home land. The covenants for the original Linden Homes and the Bellisseria continent Linden Homes are slightly different, so please be sure to review the covenant that applies to the region your home is located in.

To view the covenant which applies to your Linden Home, go to your Linden Home's land and choose World > Region / Estate, then click the Covenant tab or right-click on the ground and choose About Land then click on the COVENANT tab.

You are not allowed to:

• Terraform Linden Home land, sell it, deed it to a group, join it with another parcel, or divide the land.

• Modify the structure.  For example, you cannot move or eliminate individual components of your Linden Home such as the fireplace or a window.

• Move or rotate the structure.  Your Linden Home must remain as it came on its parcel.  If you want both a Linden Home and more land for your subscription membership account, you can use your remaining tier and/or upgrade on the Land Use Fees page.

Tip: Linden Home land can't be group-owned. But if your personal Resident account is eligible for Linden Home land, you can set the land to a group to collaborate with other group members.

Also, you agree that your Linden Home:

• Is for residential use only.  Business use of any kind is prohibited, including parcel rental, rental boxes, classified ads or other forms of advertising, and event listings.

• Will be kept presentable and in-theme.

• Does not include traffic tracking.

• Land cannot contain temporary object rezzers or individual prims beyond the maximum size allowed by the Second Life Viewer build tools. Skyboxes are allowed on the Bellisseria continent above 2000 meters. Skyboxes are not allowed for first-generation Linden Homes.

Etiquette

Living in a community includes courtesy towards your neighbors. Here are some guidelines for etiquette in Linden Home regions:

• Use local chat say, rather than shout.

• Adhere to the maturity rating for the Linden Home region you are in.

• Respect your neighbors' privacy.

• Review general Second Life etiquette suggestions and incorporate them into your Linden Home experience.

House controllers

Each Linden Homes parcel is equipped with a House Controller like the one shown here. It is just outside the parcel boundary, often near a street or sidewalk or on the dock next to a houseboat parcel. Yours may look like a mailbox or some other marker appropriate to the neighborhood.

A House Controller is your tool for selecting the specific model of home you want to erect on the parcel. To use it, simply left-click on it. The House Controller will only respond if you are the current owner of the parcel. It will not respond to guests, friends, or strangers.

When you rez a new home, we advise you to wait for 30 seconds before using any of the house controls.  This will allow time for the home to download important information about its decor and access permissions.

Choose a home from one of the available models by clicking one of the numbered buttons. Your new home will appear near the center of the parcel, replacing whichever home was there before. You cannot rotate the home (except for Camping Trailers) or move it to another spot on the parcel. Linden Homes are always rezzed with the front door facing the House Controller.

You may replace the model on your parcel at any time. Homes within a theme all fit in the same parcel area, so they will not interfere with vegetation, fencing, or other objects that Linden Lab has placed on land next to your parcel. However, because each model has a different floor plan, you will usually need to move furniture or other items that you have placed in a previous home so that it is arranged well in your new home.

If you select the notecard option, you will receive an instructional notecard. It will explain the features of your house in greater detail than they are covered in this guide.

If you select the Content Creation Pack option, you will receive a folder of items that you may use to landscape your parcel and decorate your home.

House control panels

As you enter a Linden Home, you will find a Control Panel just inside the front door. The control panel is your tool for customizing the appearance of your home and for controlling access. The layout of menu buttons for a Control Panel varies slightly from one theme to another, but all Linden Homes have the same basic set of functions described here.

Click on the Control Panel to see the main menu of your options:

When you make most changes with the Control Panel, you receive confirmation in chat. A notice appears within a few seconds to tell you that the new information has been recorded in the system.

The Door button offers you a choice between allowing your doors to Stay Open when you click on them, or to AutoClose within ten seconds after they are opened.

The Windows button on the main menu toggles the window covering (blinds) up or down. Using this button in the Control Panel toggles all windows in the house at once, so that they are all either up or down at the same time. If you (or a person you have granted access to) want to raise or lower a single window covering, you can do that by simply left-clicking on the window covering (Note: Some house models also offer the option to open and close individual windows. Where that option is available, it is not managed in the Control Panel. To open a window, you just left-click on it).

The Access button, which is only visible to you as the parcel owner, will let you give additional people permission to use the Control Panel menus. Using its Add Name menu option, you create a whitelist and add anyone you choose. The person does not need to belong to a special group. You may remove the person’s access permission at any time by clicking this same Access button and using the Remove Name option. If you have created a whitelist, you may check to see who is on it by using the View List option.

The Access menus allow you to control who has permission to use some features in your home. There are three access levels:

• ONLY ME is the highest level. If you click that menu button, nobody else may use the Control Panel, operate the window blinds, or open doors.

• LIST is the middle level. If you have created a whitelist, selecting LIST gives people on the list permission to operate window and door functions, and most functions in the Control Panel (but not the Access functions).

• ANYONE is the lowest level. If you click that button, anybody may open doors or operate the blinds. Only you and people on the whitelist may use the Control Panel.

Please note that the Access menu does not control permission to rez objects in your home, or change its music stream. Manage those permissions by creating a group for your home, as discussed later in this guide.

The Redecorate button offers options which are different in each home theme, although some features are found in all themes.

• The Outside button offers different color schemes for painting the siding on the home.

• The Wall button lets you change the color of the walls inside your home.

• The Floor button lets you choose among options for flooring inside the home, so you may opt for carpeting or different types of wood flooring.

• Submenu buttons on some themed homes include options for changing the color of the Roof, Trim, Deck, or other parts of the home that are special for that theme.

Most menus in your Control Panel also contain two other buttons. The Done button closes the Control Panel menus and saves your most recent changes in the system’s memory. The Back button opens the previous dialog menu.

Custom interior wall colors

Starting with the Victorian Homes, introduced in late 2019, the Control Panel includes a new option for decor, the ability to create  up to nine custom colors to apply to interior walls in your home. 

Clicking on the My Colors button in either the Main menu or the Redecorate > Walls menu opens a submenu that lets you decide whether to create a New Color or apply one that you have created before:

You may then use either a Color Picker (graphic interface) or may type in RGB values for a color that you may have designed elsewhere.

The Color Picker is similar to the interface that you will find in your SL viewer’s Edit > Texture > Color panel:

If you choose the Type <RGB> option instead, it opens a text box where you may enter numerical values for the Red, Green, and Blue components of a color

Once you have created a color using either method, you may apply it to the walls in any room in the house. You may also apply any of nine preset colors if you wish.
 

Content creation packs

As a homeowner, you may want to personalize your parcel by adding vegetation, pathways, rocks, or other decorative items. Please remember to stay within the theme of your neighborhood. For more specific details, refer to the covenant in World > About Land when you are standing in your parcel.

As an aid, your Linden Home comes with a free Content Creation Pack. In it, you will find items that you may use to spruce up your home/parcel -- items such as decor items, textures, wall/fence kits and lighting may be included. Unlike the house itself, which does not add to the Land Impact on your parcel, these extra objects and anything else that you rez will add land impact, so be careful to stay within your limit. Refer to World > About Land > Objects to verify your available land impact.

You may receive the Content Creation Pack by clicking on the appropriate menu option in your House Controller.

Textures

Texture packs with the building textures for each first-generation Linden Home theme are available at the Linden Home infohubs. Resale of textures is prohibited.

Texture pack locations:

• Meadowbrook Infohub

• Tahoe Infohub

• Elderglen Infohub

• Shareta Osumai Infohub

Privacy

Total privacy in an open community like Linden Homes is not possible, but there are ways that you can manage access to your home and its features. As noted above, for example, you can use your home’s Control Panel to control who may enter your home and use its redecorate functions. You may also use the Options tab in World > About Land to determine who is allowed to rez objects on your parcel and whether people outside the parcel can see and hear what you are doing.

You may not use selections in the Access tab of About Land to set ban lines around your parcel, but you may use the Linden Homes Security System (found in the Content Creation Pack) to eject unwanted visitors from your parcel. You may not use other security systems that have a shorter warning time or a greater detection range than the Linden Homes Security System.

The security system is designed to be wall-mounted. When activated, it scans your parcel as much as 400m above and below the control unit, provides a warning to unauthorized visitors, and then ejects them from the parcel. It does not detect people in neighboring parcels. You may adjust the system’s range and the amount of warning time (minimum 15 seconds), and may tell the system to ignore members of your group or specific people that you have added to its whitelist. The system will not function if it is placed at an altitude between 100m and 2000m above sea level, but can be used in your Linden Home or in a skybox above 2000m. Instructions for setting up the system and operating it are provided on a notecard with the unit, and in shortened form, by clicking on the system’s help (?) button.

Getting help

Many issues with Linden Homes can easily be solved by using the home controller to rez a new copy of your preferred home. This new copy will appear in exactly the same position as the current home, but should be new and fully operational.

To rez a new copy of your preferred Linden Home:

• First, please note the name of your current Linden Home style. You can hover over the house to see its name, which will usually be some variation of 'LH - Theme - Style' -- for example, 'LH - Fantasy - Amberbrooke'.

• Once you're sure of the style name, stand outside your home and click once on the house controller.

  • In many Linden Home themes, this looks like a mailbox, but in some themes it may look a bit different. See house controllers for more information on what the controller looks like for your theme.

• When the controller pop up appears, click the number that corresponds with your preferred home style.

• Your old home object will disappear and be replaced with a fresh copy of the home style you've selected.

If you need further assistance with your Linden Home, please contact our Support team for help. Premium and Premium Plus account holders are eligible for live chat and ticket support from the Support Portal, and Plus members are eligible for ticket support.

If you need support for your Linden Home:

1. Go to the Support Portal and choose Submit a Support Case.

2. Select Land and Region from the first dropdown menu.

3. Select Linden Home Issues from the second dropdown menu.

4. Fill out the required fields; make sure to include as much relevant information as possible when describing your issue.

5. Click Submit to submit your ticket.

Requesting terraforming of adjoining land

If there is an issue with the terraforming of your parcel or nearby land that you suspect is an error:

1. Go to the Support Portal.

2. Click Contact Support.

3. Click Submit a Support Case form.

4. From the dropdown menus, choose:

   1. Land and Region

   2. Linden Home Issues - Terrain or Content

5. Fill in the rest of the required fields.

6. Click Submit to submit your ticket.

Bellisseria Fairgrounds

The Bellisseria Fairgrounds is open to all subscribing membership Residents of Second Life to use for their events. Private events that require the Fairgrounds to be restricted to a certain list or group of people are not a good use for the space; however, if you are happy to welcome anyone to your events then the Bellisseria Fairgrounds is a great place to choose to plan your next party, get together, shindig or whatever!

Any Resident with a paid membership subscription can reserve the Bellisseria Fairgrounds for their event, though preference will be given to members of Bellisseria Resident groups. While any public event is welcome at the Fairgrounds, we encourage the planning of events that contribute to and support the Bellisseria community spirit.

Use this form to reserve the Bellisseria Fairground to host an event: http://bit.ly/BellisseriaFairgroundsCalendar

Bellisseria Snapshots

General information

The Second Life Destination Guide highlights some of the best inworld locations and Resident creations. For new and existing Residents alike, it is the place to go to explore and discover what's most exciting in Second Life. Linden Lab keeps the Destination Guide fresh with regular updates, so check back frequently!

The Destination Guide is available in several different ways:

See all destinations listed on the guide directly on the Web at http://secondlife.com/destinations.

In the Second Life Viewer:

• Click  in the toolbar, or Destinations under the World Menu (it opens the destinations floater in the viewer).  The DESTINATIONS floater displays a few categories of destinations that are hand-picked by our Editorial team.

• Click  to open the Second Life Search window.  Then check the Destination Guide box and search or peruse the incredible variety of locations and events!

Information for landholders and other stakeholders

Currently, the best way for a Resident to promote a venue, event, or business is through inworld search or the classifieds. We encourage all venue owners to review the guidelines at the Search FAQ for information on how to maximize your presence using inworld Search.

Venues and content featured in the Destination Guide are not paid placements. However, we welcome Resident suggestions for cool spots to feature. Some entries included in the Guide are also surfaced on the website for Residents exploring SecondLife.com for the first time. You can submit a venue for consideration on the Destination Guide Suggestion Page. Be sure to follow the submission guidelines below.

Note: By nominating a venue, you authorize Linden Lab to use its content. Journalists, publishers, filmmakers, and others interested in Second Life often contact Linden Lab for images of Second Life. Linden Lab may direct these parties to the Destination Guide for promotional shots.

How venues and content are selected

Selections for inclusion are at the sole discretion of Linden Lab.

Criteria favoring selection:

• The venue is a high-quality implementation of the Second Life experience.

• The venue appeals broadly to the Second Life community, including new Residents.

• The submission includes a compelling and visually interesting screenshot.

• The submitted description text accurately describes the location.

Criteria weighing against selection:

• The venue has been warned for failure to comply with some aspect of the Terms of Service.

• The venue and/or submitted screenshot appears to contain unlicensed, copyrighted, and/or trademarked content that may not be authorized by the rights holder.

• The venue is currently violating the Terms of Service through use of bots, campers, illegal gambling, or mainland Adult content.

• The venue is not open to the public and Residents must join a group to enter.

• The submitted screenshot contains photoshopped text over the image.

• The submitted description text is not in complete sentences or third-person voice and includes lists of keywords and/or incoherent or inaccurate text.

Editors' picks

Editors' Picks features fun and beautiful destinations selected by our Editorial team. It is rotated every couple of weeks to give other destinations a chance to be featured. To increase your chances of having your Destination featured in Editors’ Picks, consider whether your venue meets some of the following criteria:

• Is it newcomer-friendly? Does the region have scripted kickers, age limits, or other payment info restrictions set in place that would restrict access or reduce a quality experience for newer users?

• Are all areas of the destination open to the public?

• In an effort to make Editors' Picks more new user friendly, we are not considering any Adult rated regions for it.

Please note that you cannot request to be featured in Editors' Picks. Who is featured, when they are featured, and for how long they are featured is up to the discretion of the Editorial team. 

Destinations floater

The destinations featured in the Destinations Floater in the viewer are just a small selection that are picked by our Editorial team and are often rotated (except for the "What's Hot Now" category, which is auto-generated.) To increase your chances of having your Destination featured in the floater, consider whether your venue meets some of the following criteria: 

• Is it newcomer-friendly? Does the region have scripted kickers, age limits, or other payment info restrictions set in place that would restrict access or reduce a quality experience for newer users?

• Are all areas of the destination open to the public?

• In an effort to make the floater more new user friendly, we are not adding any Adult rated regions or categories to the floater. 

The "What's Hot Now" category is auto-generated by the system and is not controlled by us. It randomly features any destinations listed on the Destination Guide that currently have 20+ avatars on the region. 

Newcomer friendly

The destinations featured in the Newcomer Friendly Spots category of the Destination Guide are part of our Community Gateway Program or have been picked by our Editorial team because they may meet some of the following suggested guidelines:

• Is the landing point (and any immediate surrounding areas) optimized for new residents? For example, is it set correctly so arriving visitors land at the right spot? Also, do navigation tools like teleporters route people to the right place?

• Avoid use of "insider" language or instructions that may be confusing to someone accessing Second Life as a new Resident.

• Is the venue arrival experience free of unsolicited group invites, excessive notecards, and other inventory offers? These notifications are confusing to many new Residents, who are unfamiliar with how groups and inventory work in Second Life.

• Are there clear pointers to get further help with Second Life? For example, a link to our Support Portal or the Second Life Answers community help.

• Does the venue have an active and welcoming community within close proximity of the landing point? Are there Residents available to give guided tours?

• The region must not have scripted kickers, age limits, or other payment info restrictions set in place that would restrict access or reduce a quality experience for newer users.

Adult-rated areas

Second Life’s Destination Guide aims to include a wide variety of communities and venues, including those in regions with Adult ratings. However, as a globally available service, Second Life is subject to many regional restrictions that prohibit advertising or promotion for some types of content and services, such as escorts and explicit content, including nudity.

Because content listed in the Destination Guide can be seen by users of all ages and in all territories, no descriptions — regardless of rating — should contain explicit or overtly sexual language or imagery.

Linden Lab’s guidelines for inclusion of adult-rated content in the Destination Guide aim to be consistent with the search-industry standards for advertising and search-engine promotion, as seen in these published guidelines by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo:

• Google AdWords Adult Content Guidelines

• Bing Ads/Microsoft Adult Content Guidelines

• Verizon Media Adult Content Guidelines

As with all Destination Guide submissions, each entry is subject to review and editing by Linden Lab editorial staff. For more information on Second Life and Maturity Ratings, see Second Life Maturity Ratings page in the Knowledge Base and the Adult_Content_FAQ in the wiki.

Submission guidelines

You may suggest a destination using the form if:

• You personally own the parcel.

• You belong to the group that owns the parcel.

• You are on the access list of the Private Region that contains the parcel.

• The parcel belongs to Governor Linden and is set in ABOUT LAND > OPTIONS tab as a Hangout.

• The parcel belongs to a friend and is set in ABOUT LAND > OPTIONS tab as a Hangout.

• The parcel is 512m² or larger.

• The parcel is NOT a Linden Home.

Suggested venues must comply with all of the following:

• Community Standards

• Trademark Guidelines

• Terms of Service

• DMCA policy

• Snapshot and machinima Policy

Warning: Do not suggest content that is copyrighted or otherwise subject to another party's proprietary rights (including privacy, publicity, trademark, and trade secret rights) unless you own the rights or have the owner's permission. Content determined to infringe upon intellectual property rights is removed from our website and services.

Residents are limited to two suggestions per month. You can also email the Destination Guide editors your suggestions. Please include a link to your image that meets the submission criteria below:

Image specifications

The quality and aesthetic composition of your image helps persuade Residents to visit your suggested inworld location, so submit a well-composed screenshot that captures the creativity, community, and/or aesthetic beauty of your venue. Do not photoshop, layer, and embed any text or logos on the photo itself. It should be a clear image of the inworld location, so please do not overly process or use an AI generator or editor to enhance it.

The Destination Guide submission form asks you to include a link to a web-hosted screenshot of your venue. Your image can be hosted on any photo-sharing or web-hosting site, such as Flickr. Use JPG format with the dimensions of 657 width by 394 height, in pixels (657x394 has a 5:3 aspect ratio). For example (see on Flickr). Or you can email the image to us directly at editor@lindenlab.com and include your submission information.

Be sure to include the full URL to the web-hosted screenshot for your listing. Please note that the Destination Guide user suggestion form may reject images that do not meet this exact criteria. 

In some cases, Linden Lab editors may re-shoot images to improve visual clarity or composition, but we strongly prefer you submit quality images to begin with.

Note: If you receive a form error when you try to submit your suggested destination, please email the Linden Lab editors. Include the submission suggestion and the info requested in the form (title, description, SLurl link) along with the image as an attachment.

Text specifications

On the submission form, aim for a description under 400 characters and a title under 25 characters

Destination Guide uses third-person voice, so avoid the use of first-person language (such as I, we, our, us, and my). Also, refrain from using adult language, overly-hyped or promotion-heavy language, or advertising job vacancies. Destination Guide entries should be informative rather than overtly promotional. Lists of keywords are not acceptable as descriptive text, please use complete sentences.

Linden Lab reserves the right to edit material for length and clarity.

Contact the Linden Lab editors

For questions or update requests to existing entries, or to report an error — like a wrong SLurl or place that's gone — contact the Linden Lab editors via email. Please note that we are not able to respond to every inquiry, however, we welcome all comments, feedback, and suggestions.

As a Second Life Resident, you have a profile that you can customize to share more about yourself. It is opt-in and can be a lot of fun to fill out. Why bother? Many fellow Residents surf profiles, and if you're open to making new friends, a completed profile makes you a much more fascinating person to get in touch with.

How to view and edit your profile

To edit your profile information:

1. Log in to the Second Life Viewer

2. Select Me > Profile

3. Select the tab you'd like to edit and click into the boxes to update your text, add Picks, or share something to your Feed.

To edit your profile picture:

1. Log in to the Second Life Viewer

2. Select Me > Profile

3. On the Bio tab, click the Actions dropdown

4. Click Change Photo to change your current Profile picture, or Upload Photo to add a new Profile picture from your computer.

Fill out your profile to show off your personality

On the tabs of your Profile (available from Me > Profile), you can customize your available information in a number of ways.

• Profile Picture (Bio > Actions Dropdown)

• Display Name (Bio > Actions Dropdown)

• Partner (Bio > Actions Dropdown)

• Biography

• Real Life Profile Picture

• Real Life Biography

• And available on my.secondlife.com:

  • Homepage

  • Interests

Remember that everything in your profile is optional; if you are uncomfortable sharing your real life identity or other personal information, you can either leave them blank or update your privacy settings accordingly.

Keep it suitable for everyone

Important: Content in profiles must be General, and must obey the Second Life Terms & Conditions and Community Standards.

Privacy settings let you choose who can see your information

You may choose who is allowed to view specific parts of your profile or post on your profile feed in the Settings section of your Profile at my.secondlife.com,

For each profile section, you may select:

• Everyone - Allows the whole world to see this part of your profile on the web, even if they're not Second Life Residents. You may not allow Everyone to post on your profile feed.

• Second Life - Only Second Life Residents may view these parts of your profile.

• Friends - Only Second Life Residents who are on your Friends list may view these parts of your profile.

• Nobody - This option is only available for your profile feed; if you select Nobody, you may stop everyone from either viewing or posting to your feed.

Receive notifications when someone posts or comments on your profile

On the Notifications tab of Profile Settings at my.secondlife.com, you may choose to receive inworld or email notifications whenever someone posts to your profile feed, comments on your profile, or starts following your profile. Make sure to check all your desired boxes, then click Save.

Some hyperlinks get automatically detected

As you may have already seen when editing your profile on my.secondlife.com, you can provide a home page. But what if that isn't enough? Web addresses that begin with "http://" or "https://" will also automatically be recognized as a hyperlink. Some other website conventions are also detected, such as a link that begins with "www.". For example, "www.secondlife.com" is recognized, "secondlife.com" isn't.

If you'd like to be sure your link will be clickable, be sure to start the address with http: or https: for best results.

URLs in information boxes within the Second Life viewer will also appear as clickable links to others if they're formatted with the full link information beginning with http or www.

Profile icons in the viewer

You can open another Resident's Profile from many places within the viewer simply by hovering over their name in the People window's Friends or Nearby lists, accessible by clicking the People icon on the toolbar or by going to Communicate > Friends or Communicate > Nearby people.

If you see the following icons visible, clicking on the ID card on the right will open that Resident's profile directly:  

How do I grant permission to a friend to see when I'm online/see me on the map/edit my objects?

You can grant other Residents on your friend's list the ability to see when you're online, edit your objects, or see you on the map on the web at my.secondlife.com or in the viewer on the other Resident's Profile page.

On my.secondlife.com:

1. Click the People icon in the profile window's left side.

2. On the Friends tab, find the friend whose permissions you wish to edit, then click the Gear icon next to that friend's name.

3. Choose Permissions to open a Permissions dialog.

4. Check the boxes for permissions you want your friend to have, then click Save.

In the Second Life viewer:

1. Open the Profile page for the Resident you'd like to update permissions for

2. On their Bio tab, click the Actions dropdown and select Permissions

3. In the Permissions popup, select which permissions you'd like to grant to this Resident. The options include:

   • See when I am online

   • Find me on the world map

   • Edit, delete, or take objects from my land

Remember to be careful when granting permission to Edit, delete, or take my objects, since this gives your friend permission to edit and delete all your objects! However, this permission does not grant your friends permission to access your inventory, only objects that you own which are rezzed in-world.

Real Linden Lab employee profiles have a special icon

When someone claims to be an employee of Linden Lab, you can check that person's profile to find out if they're telling the truth. Every real Linden has the following icon in their profile, so even if they've changed their display name to something creatively colorful, they're the real deal:

Web links can be opened in-Viewer 

Upon clicking an external link in a profile, you'll likely see "A pop-up was prevented from opening." You can choose whether clicking Open pop-up window opens it in the in-Viewer browser or an external browser:

1. Select Me menu > Preferences.

2. Click Setup tab.

3. Select either Use my browser or Use built-in browser.

4. Click OK to save.

   • Tip: Leaving your setting on Use built-in browser for Second Life links only can help protect your account! People who might send you a fake link that tries to pretend to be an official Second Life site won't be able to fool this setting, so if the site opens in the built-in browser, you know that address is actually a SecondLife.com link (like a Marketplace or Forum page). Once opened, though, new links you click on that forum or Marketplace page might be dangerous, so be cautious when you click, especially if the page asks you to log in with your Second Life username and password.

Residents sometimes seek help with questions such as the following:

• I rented a land parcel from another Resident and they are taking it back from me, even though I paid the fees or rent.

• Another Resident is not upholding their agreement regarding real estate, group management, performance of services, or division of revenue.

• I paid for something, but didn't receive it as promised.

• I provided something, but the buyer didn't pay for it as promised.

However, per the Second Life Terms of Service, Linden Lab is a service provider and is not responsible or liable for the Content, conduct, or services of users or third parties. Linden Lab cannot verify, enforce, certify, examine, uphold, or adjudicate any oath, contract, deal, bargain, or agreement made by the Residents of Second Life.  Nor does Linden Lab enforce or uphold rental agreements between Residents. 

While you may have a valid agreement with another person, Linden Lab is not a party to and cannot resolve your dispute.   Please contact the Resident involved and resolve the issue with them. 

If you'd like to read more about agreements with other Residents in Second Life, please see the Enforcement section of the Second Life Community Standards for specific information about third party transactions and interactions within the Second Life service.

How can I protect myself when transacting with other Residents?

Because Residents have a tremendous amount of control and freedom in how they set up businesses and services in Second Life, it's important to take step to be careful in transactions with other Residents. Most Residents aren't out to cheat anyone, but it's not uncommon that someone might not answer messages immediately, or for a vendor object to fail to deliver an item promptly. 

That said, there are some steps that any Resident can take to help avoid losing Linden dollars on transactions with other Residents:

• Whenever possible, try to do a little research before a large purchase. Read Marketplace reviews, talk to other tenants on a private region that has an available rental, or chat on the Forums with people who have had experiences with the purchases you're interested in.

• Don't spend more L$ or USD than you're comfortable losing if something goes wrong.

  • Most Residents are honest! But real life can interfere and cause problems -- if someone has to cancel a private region due to a sudden medical emergency, you may not be able to get the six months of advanced rent you've paid back. If it's an option, consider paying on a month-to-month or weekly basis, and avoid paying too far in advance.

• If you're hiring someone for a service, consider paying only part of the fee in advance and the rest on delivery. This helps protect you, so if the service provider isn't able to deliver, you haven't lost the full amount. It also helps protect the service provider, who receives at least partial payment for their work even if the agreement falls through.

  • For services like photography, modeling, event planning, or landscaping, it's an especially good idea to talk to people who've worked with your provider in the past, if you can. References go a long way to helping both parties feel comfortable with the agreement.

• Try to be prepared for a deal to fall through. If you've hired someone for an event that absolutely has to happen, try to have a backup provider in mind in case your initial provider can't make it or has to cancel. Computers can fail, Internet connections can drop, or general calamity can keep people offline.

• Leave fair and accurate Marketplace reviews on products you've purchased to help other Residents.

• If you have a problem with something you've purchased, first try contacting the merchant -- many Second Life merchants have dedicated staff to assist customers with products, and many also have vendor systems that can redelivery purchases if something has happened (such as an item being lost in inventory or failing to arrive). Sending a notecard with details about your problem and the purchase you've made is a great way to help ensure your message is seen (a notecard will arrive even if they receive so many messages that their offline IMs are capped).

• Although nobody enjoys waiting, it's best to give merchants a few days to get back to you. They might be in a different timezone or have real life responsibilities that prevent them from answering immediately. 48-72 hours is very reasonable, and most merchants respond in a timely fashion.

The unit of trade in Second Life is called the Linden dollar, commonly abbreviated as L$. You can purchase Linden dollars both inworld and online on the LindeX. Linden dollars are used to buy and sell content in Second Life, to purchase land, to tip or pay other Residents for services, and many other things. Some Residents earn enough Linden dollars inside Second Life that they choose to convert their L$ into a positive US Dollar Balance (or 'credit') on their account by selling their Linden dollars on the LindeX. 

They can then use their positive US Dollar Balance to pay for Second Life services like subscriptions or land fees, or they can choose to send those US dollars to their real life accounts via something called a payout (also known as a process credit request).

For more information on how to use a positive US Dollar Balance to pay fees or to request it be sent to an external receiving account (such as PayPal), please see Account balance. 

Important: You must have payment method on file and have accepted Second Life's Terms of Service (when logging into Second Life) in order to purchase or sell Linden dollars. You can add a payment method at the Billing Information page.

Inworld

To buy Linden dollars in the Second Life Viewer, click the BUY L$ button next to your current Linden dollar balance. In the BUY L$ window, simply enter the number of Linden dollars you want to buy and click Buy Now. Buying Linden dollars inworld yields the same value as a market buy on the Second Life website.

On the LindeX

The LindeX is the official virtual exchange of Second Life run by Linden Lab where you can:

• Buy Linden dollars for the current market rate.

• Make limit buy offers at a requested exchange rate (or better).

• Sell Linden dollars.

For a list of accepted payment methods and currencies, see Billing.

All LindeX transactions are subject to transaction fees.

To sell Linden dollars on the LindeX, you must have a payment method (such as PayPal or Visa) on your account.

Market buy and sell

Market buys and sells are the quickest and easiest ways to purchase or sell Linden dollars on the Second Life website. The LindeX automatically matches your order with the best exchange rate. The quoted exchange rate includes transaction fees, which help support the operational costs of the LindeX.

To set up a market buy:

1. Go to https://secondlife.com/my/lindex/buy.php.

2. Enter either the quantity of Linden Dollars (L$) you wish to buy or the quantity of US Dollars (USD) you wish to spend.

3. Click Place Order.

4. Enter your Second Life password when prompted.

To set up a market sell:

1. Go to https://secondlife.com/my/lindex/sell.php.

2. Enter the Quantity of L$ you wish to sell.

3. Click the Sell button.

Note: Unlike market buys, market sells do not necessarily complete instantly. Sell orders complete once the L$ are purchased by other Residents, so it may take a short while for a market sell to complete depending on how many Residents are buying L$ at that time.

Limit Buy (Best Rate Buy) and Limit Sell

Limit Buys (Best Rate Buy) and sells allow you to specify the amount of Linden dollars and the exchange rate you are willing to accept. LindeX automatically matches up buy and sell offers as they come in.

If you are buying, you will be charged immediately for the purchase. The order may be cancelled by going to LindeX Order History. If the order is canceled, the funds will typically be automatically refunded to the method of payment used to purchase them, but in some instances may be returned to your Second Life account's US Dollar balance if such a refund is not available.

To set up a Limit Buy:

1. Go to https://secondlife.com/my/lindex/buy.php

2. Under Best Rate Buy, enter the Quantity of L$ you wish to purchase.

3. Next to Exchange Rate in L$ / USD, enter the minimum exchange rate you will accept.

4. Click Place Order.

5. Enter your Second Life password when prompted.

To set up a limit sell:

1. Go to https://secondlife.com/my/lindex/sell.php

2. Under Offer to Sell Linden Dollars (Limit Sell), enter the Quantity of L$ you wish to sell.

3. Next to Exchange Rate in L$ / USD, enter the maximum exchange rate you will accept.

4. Click Offer to Sell.

If you change your mind about how many Linden dollars you wish to buy or sell, or the rate you are willing to accept, you can cancel an offer in progress on the LindeX Order History page. When a limit buy is canceled, the funds used to set up the order are typically refunded to the method of payment used to place the order, but may returned to your account as a positive US Dollar Balance if a refund is not available. Funds added to a US Dollar balance can be used immediately for a new order if you wish, but refunded transactions may take up to 5-7 business days to post to a credit card, depending on the card provider's system. When a limit sell is canceled, the Linden Dollars are returned to your avatar's L$ balance.

If you have any questions about canceling a limit buy or limit sale, please contact our Support team for assistance.

How to get Linden dollars without buying them

Earning Linden dollars

You can earn Linden dollars by selling goods or offering services to other Residents. If you're interested in becoming a merchant, read about Selling in the Marketplace.  Check out the Guide to Jobs in Second Life for a tour through some of the jobs our Residents have come up with.

Subscription membership weekly stipends

Plus, Premium and Premium Plus subscription members get a weekly stipend of Linden dollars on Tuesdays, typically in the early morning SLT (Second Life Time, or Pacific time). Upgrade your account from basic to a subscription membership to begin collecting your stipend. See Premium membership for more information.

Common LindeX issues

I bought Linden dollars but my balance hasn't updated

If you bought Linden dollars (L$) through the LindeX as an Instant (Market) buy, they should show up fairly quickly. In certain instances, it can take up to 25 minutes for Linden dollars to arrive after purchase. If they haven't arrived within 25 minutes, please check the Second Life Blog to see if we're already aware of the problem and working to fix it. Chances are good that if it's something that affects a large number of Residents, we're already on it. 

If it looks like a problem that only affects you, then please contact our Support team for assistance.

I was not charged what I expected when I bought Linden dollars

The rates quoted on the LindeX are approximate estimates, and not a guarantee of an exact transaction amount.

When a market order is placed, the order is filled with the lowest-priced L$ available at the time the order is placed. The market is very active, so an order seen as available might be gone by the time you place a new order. Typically, though, these differences in price are very small, and you may see a small US Dollar balance credit for US $0.01 or US $0.02 as a "LindeX Overpayment Credit" (as an example).

If you'd like to purchase L$ at a specific price, consider placing a limit order, which gives you greater control over the rate you pay for Linden dollars in a transaction, but which may cause that transaction to take longer to complete. 

I can't buy anything on the LindeX because of billing and trading limits

See Billing and Trading Limits to check your limits and ensure that your difficulties are actually related to your billing and trading limits. Your level will be highlighted if you're logged in.

If this does appear to be the difficulty, you may request a review of your account to increase your limits by submitting a support case:

1. Under Issue Type select Billing.

2. Under Billing, select LindeX Limits Review.

3. Fill out the remaining fields as instructed, then click Submit.

Our specialists will review your ticket request and respond to your ticket as soon as possible. Please be patient, as the response time may vary depending on overall ticket volume -- but we understand these issues are important and will do our best to respond as quickly as we can.

I can't tell how many Linden dollars I have; it just says "Loading"

Don't panic! If you've just logged in and your L$ amount, shown in the upper-right corner of the screen, says "Loading", it just means your L$ balance hasn't been loaded yet and will eventually appear. Sometimes, this is due to server issues, when we're experiencing heavy load and the data can't be retrieved quickly. Often, simply clicking on the word "Loading" will cause your balance to appear correctly.

You may also wish to check the Status Grid blog for any potential outages that may be affecting Linden dollar balances -- it may be a more widespread issue affecting you.

You can also check your Linden Dollar balance on the Account Dashboard section of the SecondLife.com website. Your current Linden dollar balance is shown on the middle of the left-hand column under Linden Exchange.

Tips

If you have waited five full minutes and your L$ balance still reads as "Loading", you can try the following tricks to try to force your balance to appear:

• Teleport to another Region.

• Log out of Second Life, and then log back in, preferably in a different Region. Giving the viewer a second chance to load your information often resolves the problem.

• Ask a friend to pay you L$ 1. If you're really nice, give it back afterward!

Obviously we don't expect you to spend large sums of Linden dollars in order to find out how many you have; if your problem persists, you should file a help ticket via our Support Portal. Generally, teleporting to another region or logging out of Second Life and relogging to a new region will resolve this issue, but it's also a good idea to check the Status Grid blog for any potential outages that may be affecting Linden dollar balances -- it may be a more widespread issue affecting you.

Is it possible to view Linden dollar transactions older than 30 days?

Second Life Residents with a Basic or Plus membership may only view in-world Linden dollar transactions up to 30 days old. However, Premium and Premium Plus members can view transactions up to 90 days old. You can also download all currently viewable transactions as a CSV spreadsheet for later reference. If you run a business within Second Life, regularly downloading your in-world transaction history is a useful way to help keep track of your businesses' sales and expenses.

To download your in-world Linden dollar transaction history:

1. Go to https://secondlife.com/account/transactions.php

2. In the Date Range field, choose choose a range that starts at the earliest possible date

3. Click the View button

4. View your transactions or download them in CSV, XML, or XLS format.

I have sold Linden dollars. How do I transfer my money out of Second Life?

You may choose to payout your positive US Dollar balance via payout methods like PayPal -- the payout methods available to you will depend on your location in real life, as sending US Dollars to Residents is subject to a number of financial regulations. To request US Dollar balance transfer, go to the Payout (Process Credit) page on the Accounts Dashboard. For more information about your options and limitations, see Account Balance and the Tilia FAQ.

I don't have an option to use the Best Rate Buy on the LindeX.

There are two modes to use the LindeX at secondlife.com: Basic and Advanced. Basic mode shows simple LindeX market data, and Advanced shows all available LindeX market data, including available rates. To view advanced LindeX market data and be able to use the Best Rate option to buy Linden dollars, edit your L$ Exchange Settings to enable Advanced mode.

• Login at secondlife.com to visit your Account Dashboard

• On the left, under Linden Exchange, click Manage

• Click L$ Exchange Settings

• Select the radial dot next to Advanced (displays all market information)

• Click Submit

The Best Rate Buy (Limit Buy) option will now appear on the Buy L$ page.

See also

• LindeX™ Exchange: Billing and Trading Limits

What to do if you forget your password

If you know your username but have forgotten your password, go to the password recovery page. Enter your username and click Send Instructions to have instructions on how to create a new password sent to the email address connected to the account . You'll need to answer the security question you chose when creating your Second Life account.

If you can't recall the answer to your security question or no longer have access to the e-mail account you provided, just contact Customer Support, preferably by opening a support case. You'll be asked to verify your identity and, working together, we can reset your security question.

We apologize in advance that support cannot retrieve passwords. Luckily, this won't be an issue once we reset your security question.

What to do if you forget your Second Life username

The username you created during registration is required to login to the Second Life® virtual world. If you forget your username, you can retrieve it:

• From your welcome email

• From the Second Life website

Note: If you forgot which email address you used when you registered, you can find out on the Contact Information page of the Second Life Dashboard. You must have either your username or email address to recover your account credentials.

Retrieve your name from your welcome email

You provided an email address to register your account. A welcome email containing the Second Life username you created was sent to this address. To locate the email:

1. Log into your email account and search your archives for "second life".

2. Look for an email with your username in the subject line: "Welcome to Second Life, YOUR NAME!"

Retrieve your name from the Second Life website

Warning: If you registered multiple Second Life accounts with the same email address, you will be able to retrieve the username of only your first account. This is a known system limitation. Before you ever have to use this form, write down your usernames somewhere you'll remember!

If you have forgotten your username or password:

1. Click Login on the Second Life website.

2. Click Forgot your login information?

3. Under Forgot Your Name? enter your email address.

4. Click Forgot Account Name.

Your Second Life name will be sent to you shortly.

How to change your password

You can change your password, along with other account-related information, on your account page. To view your account page, log in and select Account > Account Summary from the top left side of the page. Click Account > Change Password to change your password. You'll need to know your current password in order to reset it; if you don't know your current password, or are having trouble, you can use the Forgot your login information? link from the Login page for assistance.

To change your password:

1. Login to your Dashboard.

2. On the left, click Account, then click Change Password.

3. Enter your current password in the top box.

4. In the Choose a new password box, enter your new password.

   • Please note, your new password must meet the minimum strength requirements. For tips on creating a strong password, see our Password Protection page. 

5. In the Confirm your new password box, type your new password again. Both boxes must match exactly.

6. Click Save Changes.

How to change your email address

Your Second Life account is linked with an email address of your choosing, which is where things like announcements from Linden Lab and offline instant messages (if you have those enabled) are delivered. It's very important to keep your account email up to date. If your email address changes, or if you lose access to your email account, please update your email address as soon as possible.

You can easily change your email address on the Second Life website:

1. Login to your Dashboard.

2. On the left, click Account, then click Change Email Settings.

3. Enter a new email address after Enter your new email address.

4. Confirm your new email address by entering it again after Confirm your new email address.

5. Click Save Changes under Confirm your new email address.

6. When prompted, enter your account password and click OK.

Shortly afterwards, your old email address will also receive a "Second Life Email Changed" email to confirm that the change was done by you, the actual account holder.

To take advantage of all of the Second Life systems which rely on sending you messages via email, like receiving copies of your Instant Messages via email when you're offline, be sure to verify your email address. 

Account Security

Tip: Keep your account safe! Don't give your password out, and make sure your web browser's address bar shows secondlife.com to prevent being phished.

There are a number of reasons why it's important to protect your account's security, including preventing financial loss, content loss, and making sure that you have access to your account so that you can continue to use Second Life. Only the original owner of an account is permitted to log in to Second Life on that account; please don't share your password or account with other people, including friends and family. Creating a Second Life account is free and easy, and it's much safer if everyone has an account of their own to use.

Some tips for maintaining your account's security:

• Use an up-to-date email address that you check regularly.

• Use a unique password for Second Life; don't use this password or one that's similar to it anywhere else.

  • Consider using password manager software to make using unique, complex passwords easier.

• Add multi-factor authentication to your account to add another layer of security to account updates like email or password changes.

• Consider using the inworld viewer setting Use the built-in browser for Second Life links only (Me > Preferences > Setup), which will make it easier to spot when you receive a link to a website pretending to be part of SecondLife.com to trick you into logging in with your Second Life username and password.

  • You can always copy the link and paste it to your preferred web browser, like Firefox or Chrome, once the built-in browser has loaded the page.

Multi-factor Authentication (MFA)

What is Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)?

Authentication is how Second Life knows it’s you attempting to log in, by verifying the username and password you provide. For many websites and services, authentication consists of a username and a password. Both must be correct for login to succeed; this is called single-factor authentication, because the user only has to know the password to gain access to a known account.

Multi-factor authentication adds a second method of verification to the login process, in addition to a password. This second method is a code (or token) that's generated by a special app called an authenticator. 

Once enabled, MFA requires someone to enter a unique secret token to be entered when making changes to your account, protecting it from unauthorized changes to your password, email address, or payment method.

There are several types of authenticator apps available for different types of smartphones and mobile devices, including Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, LastPass Authenticator, and Authy.

Multi-factor authentication can be enabled via your SecondLife.com Dashboard. It's opt-in and not required, though it is an excellent addition to your account's security. 

Please continue to use unique, strong passwords for your account and to follow good security practices. Multi-factor authentication is great tool to help protect your account, but it's not a replacement for a good password and good security.

Using Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

Once you've enabled multi-factor authentication for your Second Life account, you'll be prompted to enter your authentication token when attempting to view or update sensitive account information on the SecondLife.com website or when logging into the Second Life viewer. 

After successfully authenticating using your MFA authenticator token, your login will proceed as usual.

For convenience, saving your password in the viewer for an easy login will also save your MFA token locally. Even if your token is saved (and the viewer does not ask you for a new one when you try to log in), someone attempting to log into your account from a different location or machine would still need to pass an authenticator challenge. 

When the Second Life viewer or the website asks for your authentication token, open your chosen authenticator app and locate your Second Life account name. Your authenticator app will have a unique, six-digit number that is valid for a specific short time period. Enter this six-digit number at the prompt to continue logging in. You may find it works best to wait until a fresh number is generated to give you the longest amount of time to enter your verification number.

Example

The first image is an example of the multi-factor authentication challenge on the SecondLife.com website. The second image is an example image of an authentication token generated by Microsoft Authenticator for the avatar ExampleResident Tester. The example token will expire in ten seconds and a new six-digit number will be generated.

How do I add multi-factor authentication (MFA) to my account?

Multi-factor authentication at SecondLife.com supports many different authenticator apps with a variety of layouts and tools, but in general, setup works like this:

1. If you don't already have an authenticator app on your mobile device, install the authenticator app of your choice.

   • Most authenticator apps, like Microsoft Authenticator or Google Authenticator, are free and available in your device's app store, and are regularly kept up to date with automatic updates.

   • If possible, please choose a mobile device that has a working camera. You'll need a camera to scan a QR Code during the setup process. If you don't have a working camera, some authentication apps will also allow you to use a setup key. A setup key is a long string of letters and numbers you can enter by hand; it's visible under the QR code during the setup process.

2. Visit your SecondLife.com Dashboard and login, if necessary.

3. On the left side of the Dashboard under Account, click Multi-Factor Authentication. 

4. Read the instructions on how the process works, then click Get Started.

5. Follow the provided steps to add Multi-Factor Authentication to your account. 

6. Step one is to add an entry for Second Life to the authentication app of your choice.

7. Step two uses that authentication app to generate a pair of codes (tokens) to verify that setup is working properly.

   • You can add an entry for Second Life to your chosen authenticator app by QR Code or Setup Key.

   • Once you've added an entry for a Second Life account to your authenticator app by scanning the QR code or entering the setup key,  click Continue.

   • On the next page, enter the current code your app has generated for Second Life, then wait. When the app makes a new code a few seconds later, enter that new code as your second code token. 

   • These two tokens, in sequence, will confirm your authenticator app is setup correctly. In the future, you'll only need to enter one code to log in.

Example: Adding a Second Life account to Microsoft Authenticator

Here's an example of how the process works when adding a Second Life account to Microsoft Authenticator, a commonly used authenticator app:

• On a computer or second mobile device, navigate to the SecondLife.com Dashboard and under Account, click Multi-Factor Authentication.

• Read the instructions and click Get Started to continue to Step 1 of 2 (Scan QR code below); leave the webpage open on your computer monitor.

• On your mobile device, open Microsoft Authenticator

• Sign in with your Microsoft Account (if necessary)

• On the upper right corner, click the plus icon (+).

• When asked what kind of account you are adding, select Personal Account to continue

• In the pop-up that appears, select Scan QR Code

• Your mobile device's camera will activate (though you may need to give your permission to use the camera to allow the app to continue)

• Position your device's camera so the square QR Code from SecondLife.com lines up with your authenticator app's indicator. Once lined up, your authenticator app will take it from there, adding an entry for Second Life and beginning to generate 6-digit number tokens that refresh automatically.

• Once you've scanned the QR Code, click Continue to enter the tokens your app is now generating.

• On the Step 2 of 2: Enter Tokens page, enter the token that is currently visible on your authenticator app in the First token box.

• Wait until the app generates a new token, then enter the new token in the second box.

• Click Activate MFA to complete setup -- if successful, the website will confirm you've activated MFA on your account.

Removing Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) from your account

To remove Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) from your account:

1. Login to your Dashboard on secondlife.com

2. Under Account on the left, select Multi-Factor Authentication

3. If you have multi-factor authentication enabled, you will see two options:

   1. Click Disable Multi-factor Authentication with Token if you have access to your authenticator app.

      1. On the next page, MFA Removal, enter the token code from your authenticator app and click Remove MFA

   2. Alternatively, click Disable Multi-factor Authentication via Email if you do not have access to your authenticator app.

      1. A link will be sent to your verified email address. When it arrives, click it to remove MFA from your account.

4. If you do not have access to your verified email account or access to your authenticator app, please contact our Second Life Support Team for assistance.

Troubleshooting Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

If you're having trouble logging in with multi-factor authentication (MFA) using an authenticator app such as Google Authenticator, LastPass Authenticator, or Apple’s Authenticator, follow these troubleshooting steps to resolve the issue.

Make sure you’re using the Authenticator App that you set SL up with

• You could have several authenticator applications installed. Please make sure you’re checking the one that is linked to your SL account.

Check the Code Entry

• Ensure you are entering the correct six-digit code displayed in your authenticator app.

• MFA codes are time-sensitive and change every 30 seconds. If a code doesn’t work, try the next one.

• Be mindful of typos when entering the code.

Verify the Device Time

• If your device’s time is incorrect, the authenticator app may generate invalid codes.

• Enable automatic time synchronization in your device settings:

  • Android: Go to Settings > System > Date & Time, then turn on Use network-provided time.

  • iOS: Go to Settings > General > Date & Time, then turn on Set Automatically.

Restart Your Device

• Restarting your phone may help resolve temporary syncing issues with the authenticator app.

Re-sync Your Authenticator App

• Some apps have a sync feature to adjust time settings. For example:

  • Google Authenticator (Android only): Open the app, tap the three dots, select Settings > Time correction for codes, and tap Sync now

Check for App or Device Updates

• Ensure that your authenticator app and device software are up to date.

• Updates often fix bugs that may affect authentication.

Clear Cache or Reinstall the Authenticator App

• On Android, you can clear the app’s cache by going to Settings > Apps > [Authenticator App] > Storage & cache > Clear cache.

• If issues persist, uninstall and reinstall the app. Ensure you have backup access (such as recovery codes) before doing so.

Contact Support

• If you are still unable to log in, please contact our Second Life Support Team for assistance. When reaching out, provide the following details:

  • The name of your account and the multi-factor authentication method you are using