Table of Contents

Overview

While many features and capabilities of Hubzilla are familiar to people who have used social networking sites and blogging software, there are also quite a few new concepts and features that most people have not encountered before. Some of the new ideas are related to the decentralized nature of the grid; others are associated with the advanced permissions system that is necessary to protect your data privacy. The purpose of this guide is to help you understand how to create, configure, and use your nomadic identity.

Registration

Not all Hubzilla sites allow open registration. If registration is allowed, you will see a "Register" link immediately below the login prompts on the site home page. Following this link will take you to the site Registration page. On some sites it may redirect you to another site which allow registrations. As all Hubzilla sites are linked, it does not matter where your account resides.

Your Email Address

Please provide a valid email address. Your email address is never published. This address will be used to activate your account, to (optionally) send email notifications for incoming messages or items, and to recover lost passwords.

Password

Enter a password of your choice, and repeat it in the second box to ensure it was typed correctly. As Hubzilla offers a decentralised identity, your account can log you in to many other websites.

Terms Of Service

Click the link to read the site's Terms of Service. Once you've read them, tick the box in the register form to confirm.

Register

Once you have provided the necessary details, click the 'Register' button. Some sites may require administrator approval before the registration is processed, and you will be alerted if this is the case. Please watch your email (including spam folders) for your registration approval.

Create a Channel

Next, you will be presented with the "Add a channel" screen. Normally, your first channel will be one that represents you - so using your own name (or psuedonym) as the channel name is a good idea. The channel name should be thought of as a title, or brief description of your channel. The "choose a short nickname" box is similar to a "username" field. We will use whatever you enter here to create a channel address, which other people will use to connect to you, and you will use to log in to other sites. This looks like an email address, and takes the form nickname@siteyouregisteredat.xyz

When your channel is created you will be taken straight to your settings page where you can define permissions, enable features, etc. All these things are covered in the appropriate section of the helpfiles.

See Also
The Basics about Identities within Hubzilla
Accounts
Profiles
Permissions
Remove Account

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Profiles

Hubzilla 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...



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, first go to Settings > Additional Features and enable "Multiple Profiles" there, otherwise you won't have the ability to use more than just your default profile.

Then select "Edit Profiles" from the menu of your Hubzilla site. 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. Currently, only the name field and the keywords are searched.  You may also include such 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.

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.

See Also

Advanced Searching

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Channels

What are channels?



Channels are simply collections of content stored in one place. A channel can represent anything. It could represent you, a website, a forum, photo albums, anything. For most people, their first channel with be "Me".

The most important features for a channel that represents "me" are:

In short, a channel that represents yourself is "me, on the internet".

Creating channels



You will be required to create your first channel as part of the sign up process. You can also create additonal channels from the "Select channel" link.

You will be asked to provide a channel name, and a short nick name. For a channel that represents yourself, it is a good idea to use your real name here to ensure your friends can find you, and connect to your channel. The short nickname will be used to generate a "webbie". This is a bit like a username, and will look like an email address, taking the form nickname@domain. You should put a little thought into what you want to use here. Imagine somebody asking for your webbie and having to tell them it is "llamas-are_kewl.123". "llamasarecool" would be a much better choice.

Once you have created your channel, you will be taken to the settings page, where you can configure your channel, and set your default permissions.

Once you have done this, your channel is ready to use. At [observer=1][observer.url][/observer][observer=0]example.com/channel/username[/observer] you will find your channel "stream". This is where your recent activity will appear, in reverse chronological order. If you post in the box marked "share", the entry will appear at the top of your stream. You will also find links to all the other communication areas for this channel here. The "About" tab contains your "profile", the photos page contain photo albums, and the events page contains events share by both yourself and your contacts.

The grid, permissions and delegation



The "Grid" page contains all recent posts from across Hubzilla network, again in reverse chronologial order. The exact posts that appear here depend largely on your permissions. At their most permissive, you will receive posts from complete strangers. At the other end of the scale, you may see posts from only your friends - or if you're feeling really anti-social, only your own posts.

As mentioned at the start, many other kinds of channel are possible, however, the creation procedure is the same. The difference between channels lies primarily in the permissions assigned. For example, a channel for sharing documents with colleagues at work would probably want more permissive settings for "Can write to my "public" file storage" than a personal account. For more information, see the permissions section.

You can also delegate control of your channels' posts and connections, but not its configurations, to another channel. That is done by editing a connection and assigning it the permission to administer your channel's resources.

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