I'm pleased to announce the open beta of me2oh.com, a new Second Life community site. The site has the following features and I encourage all members of this group to join and invite their friends. If anyone has any suggestions or ideas, please feel free to post them in the forums on the site or contact me directly via our contact form or via my account on groups.drupal.org.
Member Profiles: Like any Drupal-based site, we have member profiles. We're using Content Profile to allow each member to create their profile node and complete as many or as few of the fields as are available. The goal is to create a very robust profile system that contains first life and Second Life details about each member, including the types of connections they wish to make with others, so that the each member may easily search the profiles based on any of the profile fields. This should create a system where someone looking for a new friend or a business partner will find it as easy to find one as someone looking for romance or other social activities.
Verification: We are using the SlUser module, created by ssm2017 Binder to verify the ownership of avatars and link them to the accounts on me2oh.com. In addition, thanks to ssm2017, usernames on the Web site are identical to the linked avatar names (and are automatically changed if they do not match the avatar names when accounts are created). Verification makes it impossible for one avatar to impersonate another avatar on the site so that members always know who they are dealing with.
Organization Profiles: Profiles for businesses, nonprofits, educational institutions, military & government, etc. can easily be created by all members. Any Destination profiles (see below) that are created can be associated with an organization in order to make the organization's important landmarks easy to find. The same is true for groups (see below), which can also be associated with an organization. This makes an organization profile a home page for a member's business, nonprofit, etc., tying it into the other content they create.
Destination Profiles: All members may create destination profiles, which are basically landmarks with a description and image. These destinations can then be associated with an organization profile (optional).
Groups: We're using organic groups to allow all members to create their own groups and join forces with other members who share similar interests and goals. A group can be created for anything, so we can envision members creating groups to support their customers, private groups for their staff and friends, groups for their hobbies or political interests, etc. Each group has two content types: a Discussion and an Announcement. Announcements are meant for group managers to use when they want to announce something to the group without accepting comments on the announcement. Discussions are similar to forum topics, and group managers can restrict which group members are allowed to post new discussions. All members may comment on discussions, however. Both announcements and discussions may be public (everyone on the site can see them) or private (only group members can see them).
Member Blogs: Every member receives a personal blog. Why would you post to your avatar's blog at me2oh.com instead of on another Web site, like WordPress.com, Blogger.com, or your own hosted site? More exposure. Other Second Life residents know that they are going to find people at me2oh.com who are interested talking about Second Life. Member blogs can be a showcase of their avatars and everything they do in Second Life. And, of course, members may always cross-post stories on their blogs at me2oh.com and other blogs they may have.
Image Galleries: All members are able to create images and galleries. We are encouraging members to submit pictures of themselves in Second Life, images of their products, real world photography, and any graphic design work they are interested in showing off to the world.
Status Updates: Think of these as a Twitter-Facebook hybrid. We're using the Facebook-style Statuses module to accomplish this. All members may post status updates on their profile pages and respond/reply/comment to/on the status updates of others. Members may also post status updates directly to the profiles of their friends, similar to posting something to the Wall of a friend on Facebook (we're using the User Relationships module for this).
Forums: Yes, we have forums, too. We're using the Advanced Forum module to make them look like the forums our members will find on many other sites. It should be a rather familiar experience for them.
Script Library: We encourage all members to submit scripts to the script library so that others may use them in their own creations.
Tutorials: Members are encouraged to write tutorials that will help others accomplish tasks in Second Life.
Staff Blogs: Our staff maintains three blogs on different subjects: avatar customization & fashion, destinations in Second Life, and Second Life news. We are currently looking for writers, so if you are interested in writing for us, please see our employment page.
Right now, as we've just gone live, we are focused on new members and testing the features. The content in the staff-run blogs should begin appearing in the next few weeks, and we encourage members to create new groups, organizations, destinations, images, scripts, and tutorials in order to fill those sections of the site with content. Additional tutorials and scripts will be added by us as well.
In order to make it easy for new members to set up their accounts, they will see a "task notepad", titled "My Tasks" in the left sidebar of the page once they log in. The notepad lists five simple tasks (with links to instructions), including verifying their avatar at a terminal in-world, creating their profile, and uploading a user account image, and each task is crossed off until all are completed, at which time the notepad disappears from the sidebar. The whole process of creating the account, verifying the avatar, and uploading a picture takes less than five minutes.
If you've read this far, I appreciate your time and welcome you to me2oh.com. Please join today and help our new community grow!