Default Avatars for Standalone Regions and Grids

It is possible to enable a public user registration and password reset feature for your standalone OpenSim regions and grids. These features provide web pages, that allow anybody to create new user accounts, using a default appearance defined using a default avatar, or to reset their password.

When an user account is created, the email address is validated by sending an email to the user. The user has to click a link in that email, to verify his identity. It is possible to restrict the number of accounts that can be created using the same email account.

The following sections describes how to setup and use these features.

Create OpenSim Default Avatars

First create OpenSim avatars that you will use as default avatars. Default avatars wear clothes and body parts that you want new users to wear when logging in the first time. This way new users already look nice from the beginning and they do not have the ugly default look.

Each default avatar should have a name that indicates that it is not a normal avatar, for example by using the first name "Default". For example "Default Male" and "Default Female" are the standard default avatar names for male and female avatars.

For each default avatar create subfolders in the Body Parts and Clothing inventory folders. Then put body parts and clothes into these folders - things you want to give new avatars. Just use these subfolders that you have created. Then let the default avatar wear what should be worn when logging in the first time.

Public User Registration Page

Everybody can use the following URL to create accounts for your world, using a default appearance:

http://www.dreamlandmetaverse.com/signup/<region or grid name>

This URL also works, but it skips the default user appearance selection and the avatar will have a default look:

http://www.dreamlandmetaverse.com/signup2/<region or grid name>

E-mail addresses get verified and the number of avatar per email address can be restricted. By default only two avatars can be created per email address.

Beside that users can reset their passwords using this web page:

http://www.dreamlandmetaverse.com/reset/<region or grid name>

OpenSim Default Avatars

To make the public registration work, you first need to create default avatars in your virtual world as described above.

Then take pictures of your default avatars and edit them to create nice looking 200x400 pixel images. As next step log into the OpenSim admin web site, select the menu "MyOpenSim > Default Avatar". Then click on the "Create Default Avatar" button. The form that appears allows you to "link" your in-world default avatars with the appearance selection list for you standalone OpenSim region or grid.

Optionally you can put each default appearance into a category. You can also influence the sorting of the default avatars. For each default avatar you specify a name to be shown, the in-world default avatar name as well as the image of that avatar (which you can upload).

After you did that, your in-world default avatars are "linked" with the web site and the public user registration web page will work as expected, allowing new users to select a default appearance.

Integration as IFRAME

You can integrate this public user registration page in your web page using an IFRAME HTML element. For that I can remove the header, footer and other elements of the user registration and password reset pages. Simply contact me when you want me to remove these elements.

This is the HTML code to integrate this functionality using an IFRAME HTML element:

<p><iframe width="100%" scrolling="no" height="800" frameborder="0" src="http://www.dreamlandmetaverse.com/signup/<region or grid name>" name="user signup"></iframe></p>

<p><iframe width="100%" scrolling="no" height="800" frameborder="0" src="http://www.dreamlandmetaverse.com/reset/<region or grid name>" name="password reset"></iframe></p>

Example with disabled header and footer:
  http://www.dreamlandmetaverse.com/signup/Grid%20NGrid

Customized Default Avatar Selection & Confirmation Web Page

It is possible that you create a page on your web site, where new users can select a default avatar, i.e. by clicking on an image, before they get forwarded to the page, where they can enter their user name, password and email address. This can be done by using the following URLs for each of your default avatars:

http://www.dreamlandmetaverse.com/signup2/<region or grid name>/<defaut avatar>

Additionally it is possible to provide an URL to a web page that shows a confirmation message to the user, after successfully registering a new user account. The following URL format additionally allows you to include the URL of a confirmation web page. In the confirmation URL you need to replace all "/" characters with "\" characters.

http://www.dreamlandmetaverse.com/signup2/<region or grid name>/<defaut avatar>/<confirm URL>

Special Requirements

If you have special user registration requirements, for example if you have to check the age or membership of an applicant, you cannot do this with the standard functionality we provide. In that case you can use the Grid Management Interface we provide to implement your specific web forms and processes, tailored to your needs.

Many grids prefer when user registration and password reset web forms look precisely like the grid web site. The Grid Management Interface allows you to create web pages with your individual look & feel.

Some grids like to register all users manually, using the Control Panel. They do not provide such public forms.