Profiles
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Red has unlimited profiles. You may use different profiles to show different "sides of yourself" to different audiences. This is different to having different _channels_. Different channels allow for completely different sets of information. You may have a channel for yourself, a channel for your sports team, a channel for your website, or whatever else. A profile allows for finely graded "sides" of each channel. For example, your default public profile might say "Hello, I'm Fred, and I like laughing". You may show your close friends a profile that adds "and I also enjoy dwarf tossing".
You always have a profile known as your "default" or "public" profile. This profile is always available to the general public and cannot be hidden (there may be rare exceptions on privately run or disconnected sites). You may, and probably should restrict the information you make available on your public profile.
That said, if you want other friends to be able to find you, it helps to have the following information in your public profile...
* Your real name or at least a nickname everybody knows
* A photo of **you**
* Your location on the planet, at least to a country level.
Without this basic information, you could get very lonely here. Most people (even your best friends) will not try and connect with somebody that has a fake name or doesn't contain a real photo.
In addition, if you'd like to meet people that share some general interests with you, please take a moment and add some "Keywords" to your profile. Such as "music, linux, photography" or whatever. You can add as many keywords as you like.
To create an alternate profile, select "View Profile" from the menu of your Red Matrix site, then click on the pencil at your profile photo. You may edit an existing profile, change the profile photo, add things to a profile or create a new profile. You may also create a "clone" of an existing profile if you only wish to change a few items but don't wish to enter all the information again. To do that, click on the profile you want to clone and choose "Clone this profile" there.
In the list of your profiles, you can also choose the contacts who can see a specific profile. Just click on "Edit visibility" next to the profile in question (only available for the profiles that are not your default profile) and then click on user images to add them to or remove them from the group of people who can see this profile.
Once a profile has been selected, when the person views your profile, they will see the private profile you have assigned. If they are not authenticated, they will see your public profile.
There is a setting which allows you to publish your profile to a directory and ensure that it can be found by others. You can change this setting on the "Settings" page.
If you do not wish to be found be people unless you give them your channel address, you may leave your profile unpublished.
**Keywords and Directory Search**
On the directory page, you may search for people with published profiles. The search is typically for your nickname or part of your full name. However this search will also match against other profile fields - such as gender, location, "about", work, and education. You may also include "Keywords" in your default profile - which may be used to search for common interests with other members. Keywords are used in the channel suggestion tool and although they aren't visible in the directory, they are shown if people visit your profile page.
Directory searches are also able to use "boolean" logic so that you can search for "+lesbian +Florida" and find those who's sexual preference (or keywords) contain the world "lesbian" and that live in Florida. See the section on "Topical Tags" on the [Tags-and-Mentions](help/Tags-and-Mentions) page for more information on performing boolean searches.
On your Connnections page and in the directory there is a link to "Suggestions" or "Channel Suggestions", respectively. This will find channels who have matching and/or similar keywords. The more keywords you provide, the more relevant the search results that are returned. These are sorted by relevance.
