Vital MX Profile Hop-Up

How-To: Build a Profile on Vital MX


Sure you can run in the stock class with your profile, but how much fun is that?

We’re psyched that plenty of you have already joined Vital MX and built profiles for yourselves, since here are plenty of things you can do with your membership here. You can upload photos and videos, comment on photos in the photo galleries, communicate with other riders, post on the message boards…you get the idea. There are plenty of way to play.

But while lots of you have already created profiles, there are those who haven’t, and there’s also a percentage of you who are still running the stock graphics on your profile. You know, that default image that shows up on your profile if you haven’t uploaded one of your own..

For those of you who haven’t yet created a profile, and for those of you who have (and who may need a few tips on upgrading its look), check out the following how-to. In there you’ll find plenty of tips for making the most of your profile.

Ready to dig in? Open up a new browser window (so you can jump between this how-to and your profile), and read on.

Look to the far right of the nav bar (near the top of the page), and click the Join Now button, or log into your current account.


Look for the Join Now button in the navigation bar, or if you've already signed up, go ahead and log in.

Clicking Join Now brings you to a registration screen. You start by typing in the username you want, and clicking the “Check Availability” button to make sure that someone hasn’t already registered that one you want.


Signing up is fast and easy.

Add your first and last name, a password (and verification), as well as your e-mail address. Next up is your birthday, male/female selection, and a zip (or postal) code. If you’re in the U.S., it should auto-fill your city for you.

From there, it’s a matter of selecting a profile photo from your hard drive (if you don’t have one handy, don’t worry, we’ll show you how to update it at a later date).

Now add the verification code, click the check box for the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, and click Join VitalMX!

If you’ve successfully joined, you’ll get a message like the one below.


Success!

How To Get Published

For a next step, we’d suggest adding some About Me text, since that’s one of the requirements for being added as a Featured Member on the homepage on Vital MX.


Click the Update Your Profile link to get to the About Me text.

On the right side of your profile page you’ll see an Update Your Profile link. Click that, and it will jump you to your About Me tab in your profile. This is where you can also change your password if you’re so inclined. As you can see here, we’ve added some text that’s been formatted using some basic HTML tags. Don’t sweat it if you don’t know any HTML, but do realize that more than likely your text will end up in one large lump.


Here's what it looks like as you're adding text in.

Also, as a tip we’d suggest writing your text in a word processing program, and then copy/pasting it to your profile. We have heard of site members attempting to write small novels in the About Me section, only to find that when they hit the Update button, that they’d spent so much time in there that the system had logged them out. Unfortunately, that meant that they lost their text. It’s frustrating, and something that we’re working to eliminate in version 2.0.


See how much difference adding an intro paragraph (or paragraphs) makes?

Main Profile Photo Tips

Okay, that covers the basics. If you need to add a main profile photo, or want to change out a main photo that you’d previously uploaded, click the Update Your Main Image link on the right side of your profile.


Here's how to access your main profile photo.

Click Browse to select a new photo from your hard drive, and click upload once you’ve selected the photo that you want. As noted  on the upload screen, the photos have to be smaller than 728 x 728 pixels, and under 500K. That’s a half-megabyte, which is actually a pretty huge file.

Even if you do upload a large file, you’ll find that our system will shrink the photos…once for your profile page (it’s reduced to 200 pixels wide), and another time as a thumbnail for the profile search pages.

We’ll give you an example below, using a photo from David Vuillemin’s profile.


DV12 and family.

You can see that DV uploaded a nice photo of himself and his family. You can also see how a thumbnail is automatically created from the center of the photo. So if you want something in particular in the middle of the photo, or want something (like a logo) to show all the way across, either upload a square photo, or make sure that it’s very centered in the photo.


You can see how the thumbnail for the profile search page gets generated...it's a square crop taken from the center of the photo.



Uh-oh...DV got cropped out. If you want to retain something specific in the photo, make sure it's a square, or central to the image.

Okay, that’s enough for today, and we haven’t even scratched how to upload additional photos to your profile, add favorite companies, send comments, add friends, write blog entries...you get the idea. But if you’ve mastered the basics here, you should be able to figure it out pretty easily. Have fun, and we can't wait to see you create.

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