A profile is the sum total of all the information you decide to enter on your Profile page. You aren't required to display most of it if you don't want to, but filling out the Profile and displaying your interests is a way to connect with others who might be interested in some of the same things.

If you to want to use your Profile as a way to connect with others, there's a lot of contact information you can show to other account holders. You can display your web page address, your email address, IM usernames, and your username on a number of different services. You can include your birthday (with or without the year) and the city you live in. In the "Interests" box you can list the things you're interested in so people searching the Directory by keyword will find your journal. In the "Bio" section, you can display graphics, counters, or other HTML, and write as much or as little about yourself as you want.

To view another user's, community's, or feed's profile, just replace username in the link https://username.dreamwidth.org with the username of the journal you want to view the profile for. You can also reach someone's profile via the before any person's username, which is a link to their profile page. Similarly, before communities and before feeds.

Caution: There's no way to hide your Profile Page completely or to make it viewable only by certain users. We've done our best to make sure you have the option of showing only as much information as you're comfortable with making public. To make sure you're displaying only the information you intend to, please view your Profile Page while logged out of your account.

Interests are keywords you list under "Interests" on your Profile Page as a way to find others on Dreamwidth who are interested in the same things you are. Listing an interest not only makes it appear on your Profile Page, it also lets others find your journal when they do a search using one of your interests as their search term. That's why instead of just listing "music" as your interest, you might list something less generic, such as "Italian Opera" or "New Wave Punk" or "Wagner" or "Metallica". The more specific terms you use, the more likely it is that other people who share your interests will be able to find you.

Each interest can only be 50 characters long. Interests can contain as many words as will fit in that 50 characters. Free accounts can have up to 150 interests, Paid Accounts can have up to 200 interests, and Premium Paid Accounts can have up to 250 interests.

Interests are always saved and displayed in all-lowercase letters, to avoid case sensitivity issues when searching.

You can search for journals or communities by interest, or edit your interests based on someone else's interest list, by going to the Interests page.

You might also like to take a look at the most popular interests other people have listed on Dreamwidth.

If you change your mind about what you've listed as your interests, it's easy to add or remove interests on your profile by editing your profile. "Edit Profile" is also available as a pull-down selection from the "Create" Menu on any of the site-skinned pages.

First, go to their profile. You can reach it by replacing username in the link https://username.dreamwidth.org with the name of the journal you want to view the profile for. You can also click on the in front of any account name to go to its profile page.

On the profile, locate their list of interests. You should find a link that says "Modify Yours" beside the word "Interests". If you select it, you will be taken to a page that displays all this account's interests with checkboxes beside each one. Interests you already have on your profile are already checked. Select the interests you want to add to your profile and deselect the interests you want to remove from your profile. When you're done, save your changes.

Go to the Edit Profile page.

If you have more than one account, or if you administer any communities, make sure you're working as the account whose profile you want to edit.

Remove, add to, or change any of the information you want to edit on the page. In the cases where you're making a selection from drop-down boxes, make sure the selection you actually want is showing in the window.

None of your changes will take effect until you select "Save Changes". When you do, you'll see a site-skinned page with the following text on it:

Edit Profile
Success.
Your profile has been revised.

From here you can go back and check to see what your profile edits look like if you want to.

Your profile page always displays the following information:

• your default icon (if you have one)
• the total number of icons you have uploaded
• your account name
• your account identification number
• the type of account you have
• the date you last posted an entry in your journal
• the total number of comments you've made and received anywhere on the site
• the number of tags you've made
• the number of memorable entries you've saved to your memories page
• the number of entries you've posted to your journal

It also lists:

• the number of accounts you give access to
• the number of accounts you have access from
• the number of accounts you have mutual access with
• the number of accounts you subscribe to
• the number of accounts subscribing to you
• the number of accounts you have mutual subscriptions with
• the number of communities you are a member of
• the number of feeds you subscribe to

There are other items you can either conceal from some account holders or remove from your profile entirely. Items you need to remove completely from your profile page if you do not want people to see them are your biography, your default icon (which you can do by choosing "No Default Icon" on your Manage Icons page), and your interests list.

Items you can choose to show only to certain people include your birthdate, your location, and your contact information, including e-mail addresses and IM names. You can show this information to nobody at all, only to people you grant access to your journal, only to people that have Dreamwidth accounts, or to everyone.

Information which can either choose to show to everyone or to hide from everyone is:

• The list of people who have granted you access to their journals
• The list of people who have subscribed to read your journal
• The communities you're a member of
• The communities where you have posting access

To change how this information is displayed, select the appropriate options when editing your profile.

You will need to go to your Edit Profile page. At the bottom of the page, in the section of the page marked "Circle", there are two checkboxes that will allow you to customize which members of your circle appear on your Profile. One checkbox says:

Mutual: Split access list into mutual access, also has access to, and also gives access to. Split subscriptions into mutual subscriptions, other subscriptions, and other subscribers.

And the other says:

Show all: Show all accounts that have given you access, and not just the ones you also give access to.

When you uncheck the box marked "Mutual", but leave the box marked "Show All" checked, your Profile Page shows the following:

People:
• Gives Access To
• Has Access To
• Subscriptions
• Subscribers

Communities:
• Member Of
• Subscriptions
    Posting Access (hidden)

Feeds:
• Subscriptions

Choosing this shows all the accounts that subscribe to you/you subscribe to/you give access to/have given access to you, but doesn't break them down into a detailed list.

When you uncheck the box marked "Show All", but leave the box marked "Mutual" checked, your profile shows the following:

People:
• Mutual Access
• Also Gives Access To
    Also Has Access From (hidden)
• Mutual Subscriptions
• Other Subscriptions
    Other Subscribers (hidden)

Communities:
    Member Of (hidden)
• Subscriptions
    Posting Access (hidden)

Feeds:
• Subscriptions

Choosing this shows all the different levels of subscription and access that you have with others on Dreamwidth, but because you've unchecked "Show All", some of them are hidden from other people.

When you uncheck both the box marked "Show All" and the box marked "Mutual", your profile shows the following:

People:
• Gives Access To
    Has Access To (hidden)
• Subscriptions
    Subscribers (hidden)

Communities:
    Member Of (hidden)
• Subscriptions
    Posting Access (hidden)

Feeds:
• Subscriptions

Choosing this shows the least detail about your subscriptions and access lists and also hides the most information from other people.

When both boxes are checked, your profile shows the following:

People:
• Mutual Access
• Also Gives Access To
• Also Has Access From
• Mutual Subscriptions
• Other Subscriptions
• Other Subscribers

Communities:
• Member Of
• Subscriptions
    Posting Access (hidden)

Feeds:
• Subscriptions

Checking both the box marked "Show All" and the box marked "Mutual" displays the most information about your subscriptions and access lists to you and to others.

When you are logged in and looking at someone else's profile, you may notice that some of the names of the people, communities and feeds in their circle appear in bold or italics.

• If a name is in italics that means that you subscribe to the account.
• If a name is in bold that means that you grant access to that person or are a member of that community.
• If a name is in both bold and italics then you both subscribe and give access to that person, or you both subscribe and are a member of that community.

This allows you to see at a glance which circle members you have in common with someone.

To maximize cross-browser compatibility and make the site more accessible for people with disabilities, we use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to strip all browser default styling from many HTML tags on site-skinned pages.

On site-skinned comment pages, you can override this reset function by using inline CSS, using the <span style=""> tag. This trick will not work on profiles, however, because security concerns mean that we have to restrict the use of CSS on profiles.

To work around this issue, we are planning to allow you to display your profile in your journal's style, where you will be able to customize the layout however you'd like. We don't know when we'll be able to do this, but it is planned.

To reduce spam, we also display links on profiles as unclickable until you have confirmed your email address. If links you enter in your profile aren't displaying, confirm your email address and they will display properly.