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:
- Log in to the Second Life Viewer
- Select Me > Profile
- 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:
- Log in to the Second Life Viewer
- Select Me > Profile
- On the Bio tab, click the Actions dropdown
- 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
- Display Name
- Biography
- Interests
- Homepage - available on my.secondlife.com
- Partner
- Real World Profile Picture
- Real World Biography
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
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:
- Click the People icon in the profile window's left side.
- On the Friends tab, find the friend whose permissions you wish to edit, then click the Gear icon next to that friend's name.
- Choose Permissions to open a Permissions dialog.
- Check the boxes for permissions you want your friend to have, then click Save.
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:
- Select Me menu > Preferences.
- Click Setup tab.
- Select either Use my browser or Use built-in browser.
- Click OK to save.