Did you know there are lists of residents that use Plurk and Twitter? I didn’t. But I found a link to the lists poking around in the wiki. So, how does one add their name to the lists?

It is easy for anyone that writes in wiki syntax. For those of us that wonder why they made it so hard to write in wikiese I’ll provide ‘how to’ instructions.

SL Wiki User Profile

How To

First is to get to the Second Life Wiki. There is so much in the wiki there is no way to get all the information on the Wiki’s Main Page.

To add yourself to the Second Life Plurk and Twitter lists you need a wiki profile. Your Web Profile won’t do this trick. You need a Wiki Profile. In many ways these are way handy. For an example of some of the things you can do with a wiki profile check out Opensource Obscure’s wiki profile. Mine looked pretty lame, so I stole some ideas from his and fixed mine up.

If you want to promote a business in Second Life, having a wiki profile is a good idea.

The wiki is typically confusing and when it comes to creating a Wiki Profile its not the exception. There is a link to the Community Portal on the Main page. The portal is for those that want to promote their presence in Second Life. So one may rightly assume this is the route to creating their profile. The problem is the new links take you out of the wiki to the new web profiles. You should have a Web Profile as it is the profile used in the SL Viewer now and eventually will be used by all viewers.

But we need the Wiki User Profile. Creating that page is anything but intuitive to anyone not wiki knowledgeable. The next step is to log into the wiki. The login link is in the upper right of the wiki pages. User your SL login ID and password.

Now that you are logged in, the links in the upper right of the page change. In the image you can see how links appear for me. If you do not have a user page, your avatar name will appear in red. To create your user profile page click your avatar name and select Edit This Page. The wiki will create the page when you add some text and save the changes.

SL Wiki Menu - Upper Right

The wiki’s editor has some editing buttons. They will help you with some formatting. This is NOT WYSIWYG editing. Section level headings or outline titles are denoted by ‘=’ symbols. If you look at my wiki profile the title About Nalates was made by typing in ==About Nalates==.

Text is just text, so just type. There are formatting buttons for bold, italics, headings, and more. There is a preview button at the bottom so you can see how things will look before you save.  There are manuals for the wiki that explain how to do the fancy stuff, if you are into that.

Obviously you can put about anything you want in your wiki profile. The part we are interested in now is getting our name to appear in the Plurk and Twitter lists. All that is needed to add your name to the lists is the text:

{{Tweeter}} {{Plurker}}

That is all that is needed to have your name appear in the lists. I suggest you put a bit more in your profile page as this text creates no visible links or text in your profiles. Also, the lists link people to your user page/profile. To get to your Plurk or Twitter page they will need a link. So, put it in your profile.

You will probably want to add a link to your Plurk and Twitter pages. To add a link to a wiki page write:

[URL_goes_first (space) visible_link_text]

So, my Twitter link in my wiki profile is written as: [http://twitter.com/#!/Nalates Twitter Nalates]

Pictures

To get a picture on your Wiki Profile is a bit tricky. With your profile-page open look in the left-side menu. There is an item, ‘Upload File’. Click it to upload an image, or sound file. This will let you upload an image that is 2mb or less. This is not a file sharing service. If you ever have to go back and try to find an image you’ll understand why it cannot be used that way.  Basically everyone’s files are dumped in the same bucket. So, remember your file name.

Once uploaded you can display the image on a wiki page. Use:

[[File:Nal_Photoshoot.jpg|200px|thumb|left|I’m {{Age|11|03|2008}} days old!]]

Replace Nal_Photoshoot.jpg with the name of your image. I think most of the other stuff is obvious. The {{ }} part is a wiki token that tells the wiki to generate my age. You can change the date (dd/mm/yy). There are other options for the token in the MediaWiki manual. The explanation of how to use the image placement tag is also explained in the manual.

Summary

The new Web Profiles do much of this for you. When you make your link to you Twitter page in Web Profiles they handle building the link. But, depending on your privacy settings, Google and Yahoo may or may not be able to access that link. Links in the Wiki Profiles have the same problem. But, it is a nice free link other residents can find.

It is also handy as a place to send people to for a number of links. I send newbies there now rather than give them a note card full of links.