.. _profile: Profile -------- Your profile page is visible to other users on Mahara by default. If the site administrator allowed it, you can also make it visible to anybody on the Internet. Per default only the following information is put onto your profile page: * Your display name (or real name if you do not have a display name) * Your pages that are visible to the person viewing your profile page * Your groups * Your wall * Your friends We advise you not to use your profile page as your portfolio because you cannot control who can look at the information you make available on your profile. At minimum it is everybody who has an account on Mahara. At maximum it can be everybody online. Always remember to think about your own personal security before releasing contact information on a publicly available page or even just for other Mahara users. Use regular pages to create your portfolio and your profile to make these pages accessible to other people and to establish your digital identity. Your *Profile* area (*Content* -> *Profile*) stores your contact and personal information. Each of the profile fields can be considered separate artefacts which may be added independently to your profile page or any portfolio page. Thus, you can reveal as little or as much information about yourself to others as you wish. .. seealso:: You can edit your profile page like any other page in Mahara. You can find more information about editing a page in the :ref:`page editor `. .. _about_me: About me ~~~~~~~~~~~ You must provide a first and last name. All other information is optional. You name is visible to other Mahara users. You may choose to have a *Display Name*. You can change the information here at any time unless an administrator locked certain fields. * **First Name**: Your real given name * **Last Name**: You real last name * **Student ID**: Fill it in if it is required * **Display Name**: The name by which you want to be known around Mahara. If you have a display name, your real name will not be visible to regular Mahara users. Only administrators can see your real name and your username at all times. * **Introduction**: You can write about yourself. This text is placed onto your profile page automatically unless you take the introduction out of your profile page. .. _contact_info: Contact information, Messaging, General ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ You may wish to provide some of your contact information for later use in a page. All details you fill in here are only visible to other users when you put them into a page. Until then only you can see them. The email address with which you registered on Mahara is displayed. You can add other email addresses to your profile so that you can use them later on. .. note:: When you add a new email address, make sure that you do not only click the *Add* button next to the field where you enter your address, but also the *Save Profile* button at the bottom of the page. Once you have added an email address, it needs to be verified. You will receive an email and need to follow the instructions to fully add your address to your Mahara account. If you use instant messaging services, you may wish to provide the details on those so that you can use them in your portfolio later easily.