Hack 17 Create an "About You" Area
 
By letting other Amazon customers know a little
bit about you, you'll add some context and personality to your lists
or reviews.
An "About You" page is like a home page for you at
Amazon. Any time you add a review, create a Listmania! list [Hack #41], guide [Hack #37], or wish list
[Hack #18], it will be accompanied by a link
to your About You page. If someone sees something you've contributed
to Amazon and wants more information about you, they can visit your
page to learn more.
To customize your page, make sure you're logged in [Hack #13], click the Your
Store tab from any page, and choose "Your About You Area" from the
lefthand side of the page.
17.1 Controlling Who Sees What
Click "Edit About You" to add or change information. If it's your
first time setting up your page, you'll see a form with a few options
you can set:
- Name
-
This should be your real name. It will be used
to personalize Amazon. You can set whether or not other people can
see it with your Identity Preferences.
- Nickname
-
This is a name that will appear instead of
your real name in some public spaces. It's also used as your name for
any Amazon Chat spaces.
- Identity Preferences
-
This lets you set whether or not your name is
available to other people on your About You page and other
nonanonymous contributions to the site. You can set your nickname to
override your name for public spaces. Or you can choose to reveal
your name only to those people you give the special status Amazon
Friend [Hack #42].
- Email Preferences
-
You can make your email address available to
everyone on your About You page, or only to a select few Amazon
Friends. With the Amazon Friends option selected, anyone searching
for your wish list with your email address will be able to find it.
- Description
-
This is a spot for your biography. Remember that
whatever you write will be available to the public, so make sure
you're comfortable with others reading it. Looking at a blank form
asking the question "Who Are You?" could invite hours of
philosophical introspection. But a few quick facts that will
distinguish you from others on the site with the same name is a good
place to start.
 |
If you've set up your page before, you won't find all of these
settings on one page. Click "Edit E-mail" to change your name,
nickname, identity preferences, and email preferences. Click "Edit
About You" to change your bio.
|
|
17.2 Adding a Picture of Yourself
To finish up
your About You page, you can add or choose a graphical representation
of yourself. This image will appear alongside your name or nickname
on your About You page and on any of your Amazon Friends' pages.
Click "Edit Image" and you'll find several premade graphics to choose
from. They're cartoon-like graphics of people and faces.
To really stand out from the crowd, though, you
can add a real photograph of yourself. Amazon doesn't host the
images, so you'll need to have some web space of your own. Upload an
image, copy the full URL, and paste it into the space provided on the
"Edit Image" page.
|
Amazon resizes all About You images to 70 pixels wide by 100 pixels
high. Your custom image should be exactly this size to avoid
distortion.
|
|
|
