Kiosk.Net V8 Documentation

Kiosk.Net Networked Object Dispenser and Advertising System v. 8.0, by Sasun Steinbeck

Congratulations on purchasing the most advanced, powerful system for distributing items, information, and grid advertising in the world of Second Life. There is a LOT to this system and I have worked hard to make it as easy as possible to set up and use. With all the power and features comes some complexity, so be patient and scan through the manual here to get an idea of what it can do and where information can be found on specific features once you are ready to use them. Product support is a keystone of my business success, so after doing your best to read the manual, don't hesitate to contact me for help. I'll be there for you!

Introduction

Configuring Your Banner Prim

Changing The Notecard, Texture, And Objects

Kiosk Subscription Groups

Building a Custom Kiosk

Kiosk Menus

Click Counts

Advanced Kiosk Modes

Script Compatibility and Integration Guide

Your Kiosk.Net Server

Showing your kiosk list on other sites

Real Estate Listings

Known Issues/Bugs

Frequently Asked Questions

Additional Tools

Kiosk Modes Examples

Transferring A Kiosk Network to Someone Else

Introduction

The easiest way to get started is to check out the Sample Networks section to quickly set up some examples of some different system configurations to see what they look like. They are very easy to set up and give you a good taste of what the various kiosk modes look like.

Version 8 of the Kiosk.Net system is completely keyless - you can pick up your servers and kiosks at any time and move them or re-rez them anywhere, any time. Everything will just reconnect after a moment and just work. You simply can't destroy the system. In case you lose your main server completely, you just rez another server, configure it, and with one click from the menu it will instantly take over as the main server for your network. You CAN'T screw it up beyond repair :)

Included in this package are lots of custom designed, FULL-MOD sample kiosks. You are free to use them as part of your kiosk network as-is or modify as you like, but may ONLY give them out as part of your kiosk system. See the licensing terms below for details. All of the sample kiosks are ready to configure and use with all scripts pre-installed.

Note that the server communicates by whispering. This means you need to be within 10m of the server to hear it, so stand close.

SETUP INSTRUCTIONS

The first thing to do is configure your server:

Rez a server and edit the "!Settings" notecard inside it.
Most of those options you can ignore for now, and read about below later. The only setting to set right now is the right near the top of the !Settings notecard, named "myID". This needs to be set to a unique keyword or phrase you make up to identify your kiosk network and link everything together in the system. It can contain spaces if you want to use a short phrase. It cannot be more than 36 characters long. Note: V8 users: do not use the character '&' in your myID name.
Save the notecard and the server will reset and load all the settings.

NOTE: You will get some errors that your server is not registered. This is normal, since it's not registered quite yet.

Now, set up a kiosk:

Rez a sample kiosk and edit the "!Kiosk Settings" notecard.
You will see a "myID" setting in there as well. Set the value to the same as your server and save the notecard.

NOTE: you will get errors from the kiosk. This is normal as well, since it's not registered yet.

Now you need to register yourself, your server, and your kiosks with the website to get it all connected:

Create a Kiosk.Net website account
1. Click the Kiosk.Net server and click Dashboard from the menu.
2. On the web page that it takes you to, in the Login box, click the Create New User link under the User Name and Password boxes to create an account.
Register Avatar
1. Click your server and click Reg Avatar. This permanently links your SL avatar to your new website account. This only needs to be done once, ever. Once done, it will send you to your Dashboard page, which at this point shows nothing.
Register Server
1. Now click the server again, and this time click Reg Server from the menu. What this does is register your server with the website. So now that server will show up under your list of servers that you own on your Dashboard page.
2. Go back to the webpage and click Dashboard to refresh the page. You should see your server now.
Register Kiosks
1. Click Kiosk View from the menu bar on the website to see your kiosks. You will probably see no kiosks at this point.
2. Click a kiosk and click Refresh to force a kiosk refresh. Wait until the kiosk says "kiosk updated".
3. Click Kiosk View again on the website to refresh the page and your kiosk(s) should show up. A manual refresh is not strictly necessary since new kiosks will normally register within 2 hours of being rezzed, or immediately after the !Kiosk Settings notecard is saved.

At this point your system should be working. The kiosk will display the sample texture in the server and give out the sample notecard in the server. Note that when you click a kiosk, you get a menu. That is because you are the OWNER of that kiosk. No one else except the kiosk owner sees that menu, they just get the stuff. So when you give out these kiosks, the new kiosk owner is the only person that will see the menu on their kiosk. If you want to see what happens when someone other than you clicks a kiosk, select "Click" from the kiosk menu then click the kiosk again. The other kiosk menu items are documented below.

SAMPLE NETWORKS

Included in your package are a few almost fully configured networks you can use as examples to see some of the various combinations of kiosk + server configurations working together in real samples.

To set one up, look in your Kiosk.Net package and rez one of the boxes named "Kiosk.Net Fully configured sample - ..." and look inside that box. Inside each one is a server, a matching kiosk, and a notecard. Rez the server and kiosk. If you have not followed the step-by-step instructions in the Setup section above, just go there now and once those are done, your sample network will be up and running. After that, read the included notecard in the sample package for any notes specific to that particular sample.

If you have already done at least one server + kiosk setup, then all that needs to be done for each of the pre-configured networks is to give the server and kiosk a unique "myID" setting value in their configuration notecards and they will connect and be fully functional.

Once you have the sample network running, you can play around with various kiosk and server settings to see what they do, with no danger of messing anything up. If you do, you can just re-rez the server or kiosk, enter in the unique ID you created, and they will continue to work.

You can actually use one of the fully configured networks as a basis for your own network. Be aware that in order to keep things as simple as possible, many of the config notecards not needed for that specific mode that the server is currently configured for have been removed. If you do decide to change modes you will be missing some of the necessary configuration notecards in the server. For this reason I'd recommend that you build a new network with the regular Kiosk.Net server rather than one of the pre-configured servers, though it is also possible to simply add the missing configuration notecards for the mode you want to set in the future. So other than a few missing config notecards, those sample servers are fully functional.

Note that the kiosk used in each sample package is the exact same kiosk. If you want to try more than one sample, you really only need to rez a new server (delete the old one) and configure it with the your myID value. After it registers, just do a refresh on the kiosk and it will automatically change mode!

KIOSK CONFIGURATION

Here are the settings in the !Kiosk Settings notecard you need to configure:

Note: I recommend setting next owner permissions for this notecard to NO MODIFY to avoid problems.

KioskVer: This is defined by you so that you can tell who has which version of your kiosk. This number shows up in the version column of your kiosk list on your Kiosk View web page. This is really just to help you be aware of which build of your kiosks are out there, but is also used by the script upgrader as well.

myID: This is defined by you and must be a unique keyword that matches the myID value you set in your kiosk server. This value is what ties all the kiosks together to the server and the website.

webserver: This is the address of the database/web server where the Kiosk.Net system lives. This should NEVER be changed unless directed to by me, in case of a catastrophic failure of the website, it can be moved somewhere else.

Texturefaces: This tells the system which faces of the main display kiosk to put your texture on. If you want to texture more than just face 2 (for example, all sides of a box), you can use the Texturefaces setting. Simply specify all the face numbers in a comma separate list. Face 2 MUST ALWAYS be the first face in the list!

Example: to texture all faces, set texturefaces=2,0,1,3,4,5

kioskprims: This tells the system how many prims your kiosk is. This is important to set accurately or some prims may become automatically unlinked!

kiosktype: Leave this set to auto. This should never be changed.

kioskstyle: This is a short description to help identify your specific kiosk model for the script upgrader, if script upgrades ever become necessary. This is very important to set, otherwise someone else's kiosk script updater object might upgrade your kiosk and essentially turn it into one of theirs if both of you leave it at the default setting!

ignoreparcel: By default, the system is designed to automatically replace a kiosk record in the database if another kiosk with the same myID value shows up on the same parcel and is owned by the same person. This is very helpful in keeping the database clean and avoiding duplicate records. By default this value is FALSE which means that only one kiosk, per owner, is allowed per parcel. Any additional kiosks will replace the one already there, in the database. If you DO need to allow more than one kiosk per owner per parcel, you can set this to TRUE. What you will see is quite a lot more "dead" kiosks in your kiosk list, since a new record is created every time someone rezzes a new (or re-rezzes the same) kiosk, requiring more work to keep your list clean and accurate by deleting those missing kiosks. For more important details, see the FAQ entry at the bottom of this help file.

KIOSK DETAILS

IMPORTANT NOTE! The sample full-perm kiosks provided as part of the Kiosk.Net product package are for you to use as part of a configured Kiosk.Net network system ONLY. You MAY NEVER sell them as part of a competing kiosk product. You may ONLY distribute them if it they fully configured kiosks that are part of YOUR kiosk network used to distribute items or information, or subscribe people to your subscription list. If that is true, you can give your network kiosks away for free or sell them if you wish. You can use any permissions you want, including full perms. NEVER give them away if they are not part of a configured kiosk network!

Display Face: Due to technical limitations of the various kiosk modes, the main display face of your kiosk MUST BE FACE 2. Use the tip below to figure out what face 2 is. Make sure that the display prim is oriented correctly with face 0 on the top, so it's not upside down.

If you want to texture more than just face 2 (for example, all sides of a box), you must specify the faces by setting the Texturefaces setting in the "!Kiosk Settings" notecard. Simply specify all the face numbers in a comma separate list. Face 2 MUST ALWAYS be the first face in the list! This is an important setting to get right since you cannot change it from the server - a mistake here will cause the kiosk to not be able to display your textures if you change them!

Example: to texture all faces, set texturefaces=2,0,1,3,4,5

Tip: One way to get texture faces: Edit your kiosk, use the "Select Texture" edit tool, select the face, and press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+T. This will tell you the the face number you currently have selected.

Kiosk Refresh cycles: Your kiosks will automatically connect to your server every 2 hours and check to see if they are out of sync with the server and update themselves at that point. If you make any kind of change to the server, and someone clicks a kiosk before it has checked in on it's normal update cycle, no problem. The kiosk will immediately refresh wilth the data from the server, which is pretty quick.

Remove Modify on settings card: I HIGHLY recommend REMOVING modify rights on your "!Kiosk Settings" notecard so that the people you give/sell kiosks to can't mess with it.

Double-sided kiosks: Note that certain kiosk modes are NOT able to be used in a "double-sided" kiosk manner. The SIMPLEARROW and CYCLEARROW modes do really strange things to the main display prim to layer the arrow texture on top of your texture, so you cannot view it from the back side. They will also permenently resize the display prim it to be very thin, which may really mess up certain kiosk designs.

Description field: The description field of the kiosks stores the cumulative kiosk click counts. Make sure that the DESCRIPTION field of your master kiosk is always set to 0 (the number zero) before you give it out. That way your total kiosk click counts will remain accurate. After you are done testing your master kiosk, be sure to set this field to zero before picking it up and giving out copies of it. Don't worry about this being changed by a kiosk owner, if they set it to some random text, it will be reset to 0 the first time someone clicks one.

Kiosk Name: Feel free to name your kiosk anything you want. Also, note that the name of the kiosk object has nothing to do with the "kioskstyle" setting in the !Kiosk Settings notecard, they don't need to be the same.

Texturing your kiosk: When you texture your kiosk, there are two critical things to be aware of. The banner prim MUST have both Repeats Per Face set to 1.0 and both Offsets set to 0 (all default values - in other words, don't change them!). You will need to do any offsets or adjustments in your original texture, not with your texture settings. The same thing applies to your main display prim if you are using VIRTUAL mode. If you change these, VIRTUAL mode will not work!

Multiple kiosk designs: Note that the kiosk mode and many other kiosk settings are controlled by the server, which means that it is very easy to update these things on the fly, but that limits you to certain kiosk designs for that particular server. You can have have different kiosk designs connected to one server, as long as they are compatible with the kiosk settings in the server, so for example you can have very different kiosk builds as long as things ilke the layout of the banner prim, the kiosk mode and display size are the same.

Allow anyone to copy permission: I would recommend you do not check "Allow anyone to copy". Though this is a good (though non-intuitive way) to virally spread kiosks, you can run into major problems with controlling how many kiosks are attached to your server. Instead, I recommend you distribute your kiosks via your server, as well as on XstreetSL or your favorite SL shopping site. For example, in VIRTUAL mode (see below) you could have a "get this kiosk" button so that people can click that button on your kiosk to get a copy of the kiosk. in SIMPLE mode, just stick a copy of the kiosk into the server with your stuff, and everyone will get a kiosk. Using these techniques you have complete control of the kiosks that you give out in case you need or want to update your kiosks. If "Allow anyone to copy" is checked, you have zero control over the spread of your kiosks. If you ever update your kiosks, the old kiosks will proliferate forever.

Testing: I can't stress the importance of testing your kiosks before you release them! Make sure that kiosk texture updates work as expected, since the face to texture is set in your kiosk, not the server, so that can't be fixed if you make a mistake.

Modify: Please note that no-mod kiosks are incompatible with AUTO mode. This is because AUTO mode needs to be able to link and de-link buttons on the kiosk, which requires modify permissions. In addition, no-mod kiosks cannot be upgraded if a script bug is found. I would reccommend that you always give out kiosk with Modify permissions so that customers can resize them as needed to fit in the space they have available and to allow script upgrades. You do run the risk of someone modifying the textures on your kiosk or moving some prims around, but in my experience that is very rare and it's really appreciated to be able to resize the kiosks.

Kiosk Parcel Group Setting: The kiosks require the kiosk owner to set the group setting on the kiosk to match the group setting on the parcel. There is an important reason for this. In my experience I've found many a kiosk that was dead and not working because the parcel owner unchecked "All Residents" for the Run Scripts option. If the kiosk doesn't have the same group tag as the parcel, the scripts stop working and the kiosk is dead in the water. However if the kiosk group tag is set to the land group, then the parcel owner can safely uncheck "All Residents" for Run Scripts and as long as they leave Group checked, then the kiosk will work fine. This requirement can cause you a little pain explaining to your kiosk customers, but will save you long term problems with many dead kiosks in the future, trust me.

CONFIGURING YOUR BANNER PRIM

The top prim of your kiosk contains two special functions, besides displaying your logo on it. You can to define up to two "virtual" buttons (clickable areas) on this prim to define your special teleport button and your special website button. The website virtual button will send the clickee to a website of your choice. The teleport virtual button will teleport people to a location of your choice. This is all done with one prim. There are two different ways to set up your banner prim.

The most important banner setting you must set regardless of the method below is the bannertexture setting. This should be the UUID key of the banner texture you want to use. This texture should have the (optional) special buttons drawn right on your texture.

Before you define your buttons, you should set your "website" setting to be your website's URL and your TP setting to be the SLURL to where you want to teleport people. This can be in one of two formats: secondlife://region/x/y/z, or http://slurl.com/secondlife/region/x/y/z

Template Method

The easiest way to configure your custom banner texture and settings is to modify a standard template that I have used in all of the servers in your Kiosk.Net package. If you simply use the same exact layout, there is no need to change most of the Banner prim settings in the server's !Settings notecard, all you need to do in this case is change the bannertexture setting to specify your custom banner texture's UUID that you upload into SL. Here's how to do that:

I have provided a sample banner texture in a few formats to download, all in lossless format except for .jpg:

I highly recommend getting a Photoshop or Paintshop version if your graphics editor supports layers and those formats, since it will be much easier to change individual layers in the image.

Once you have your template downloaded, you can simply erase one of the layers corresponding to the text or the buttons. Note that the standard layout is as follows: 20% of the image on the left is the website button, the next 60% is the text, and the last 20% on the right is the website button. As long as you stick with that format, you'll be compatible with the defaults settings for the banner prim. Since the sample textures are 640 pixels wide, that's 0 - 128 pixels horizontally for the web icon, 128 - 512 for the text, and 512 - 640 for the TP icon.

When you are done editing, save your texture as a png (avoid jpg if at all possible since you will lose some quality unless you use jpg lossless) and upload into SL. When your texture shows up, right click it to get the UUID value and paste that after the "bannertexture=" setting in your server's !Settings file. At this point you are done. Save your !Settings notecard, wait for the server to register, then click an attached kiosk and click refresh. You should see your new banner texture show up.

Buttonmaker Method

This is the most flexible method for defining buttons on your banner prim. You can place your buttons anywhere you want using this method. Use this method if you want to use a banner texture/buttons that are not laid out exactly the same as the standard template above.

To set the clickable areas for the virutal buttons on your banner prim, you specify the "webButton" and "TPbutton" settings in your server's !Settings notecard. To get these special defintions, use the special buttonmaker tool included in your Kiosk.Net package to create your virtual button definitions. There is a special buttonMaker tool optimized for defining your banner prim textures, so use that one.

Once you have your buttons defined with the buttonMaker tool, you can set the webButton and TPbutton settings to specify the clickable area on your banner texture. Note that you can give multiple definitions of both webButton and TPbutton if you texture multiple faces of your logo prim for different faces. The first number in the list after the '=' is the face number. Make sure you have that correct.

For example, let's say you have a banner prim that has faces 2 and 4 textured (which is the case for some of the sample kiosks in the kit). In your !Settings notecard you should have something similar to this:

bannerfaces=2, 4
webButton=2, 0.0, 0.0, 0.2, 1.0
TPbutton=2, 0.8, 0.0, 1.0, 1.0
webButton=4, 0.0, 0.0, 0.2, 1.0
TPbutton=4, 0.8, 0.0, 1.0, 1.0

Here is what all those numbers mean. bannerfaces tells the kiosk which faces to put your banner texture on - faces 2 and 4 (front and back for the sample kiosks). The first webButton setting says that you have a web button defined on face 2 from (0.0, 0.0) to (0.2, 1.0). The TPbutton setting means you have a TP button defined on face 2 from (0.8, 0.0) to (1.0, 1.0). The next two lines defined the same buttons but on face 4 (the back).

You can use non-box prims for your banner prim (i.e. a flattened cylinder as is used in kiosk #17), but you must do something a little different to get the correct button definitions. Instead of using the buttonmaker tool, you must drop the script from the buttonmaker tool in your banner prim (don't forget to edit linked parts first and open the contents of the banner prim!), texture it with the banner texture you plan on using, get your button definitions, then delete the buttonmaker scripts from your banner prim. Remember, your banner texture will always be replaced with the bannertexture setting in your server's !Settings notecard. Note that the existing .Banner script in there may interfere by popping up your web page or a map! Just ignore those and continue defining your two buttons. Don't forget to define buttons for the back side if you are showing the texture on both sides, too. Note that you can click the "flip" texture options if needed, in case your texture is showing upside down/mirrored on the back side.

Make absolutely sure you TEST your kiosk to make sure you have all your buttons working (front and back if you have a 2-sided kiosk) before sending it out! The good news is that if you screw it up, it can always be fixed later since it is a server setting; no need to replace any kiosks in this case.

CHANGING THE NOTECARD, TEXTURE, AND OBJECTS

This is the process you use when you want to update what items the kiosk gives out and what textures it shows. These instructions only pertain to the SIMPLE kiosk mode, which is the default for a new kiosk.net system. For more advanced modes, see below. I recommend going through this configuration exercise before diving into the more advanced kiosk modes.

Right Click and edit the Kiosk.Net Server. Look in the contents. The server contains a sample notecard and texture. The texture is what will be sent to the kiosks to display and the notecard is what will be given to anyone clicking a kiosk.
Delete the sample notecard and replace it with your own notecard (or any object to give out, instead).
Delete the sample texture and replace it with your own texture. This texture is what will be shown on the kiosks.
Add any optional Objects that you want to dispense.
Test by clicking a kiosk and selecting "Refresh" from the menu. Wait for the kiosk to udpate.
Click the kiosk and select "Click" from the menu. Click the kiosk again. You should receive your notecard and objects immediately.
Every 2 hours the kiosks will check with the server to see if they need to update anything. If your server has been updated but your kiosk has not received an update yet, and a kiosk is clicked, it will do an immediate update. The person can then click the kiosk again once it has finished updating.

Note that there are a number of "special objects" found in the server that will never be given out. They include the following items:

System scripts, which all start with '.'
System notecards, which all start with '!'.
Any special object/notecard specified in the .settings notecard, such as items specified in the groupgivenew and kioskInstructions settings.
Any textures found in the server unless explicitly specified in a settings notecard for the CYCLE, VIRTUAL and AUTO modes.

KIOSK SUBSCRIPTION GROUPS

Your SasTech Kiosk.Net system comes with a basic subscription messaging system so that customers can click a special subscription prim on your kiosk to join your subscription group and you can send them messages and any objects any time you want. Customers can click the subscription button to have old messages/IMs resent, or unsubscribe at any time. You won't need to buy an external subscription system for your customers - it's all built into Kiosk.Net.

The way the messaging system works is that each message with associated notecards/object is stored in one IM Machine object per message. So each message you send out needs one IM Machine rezzed and left alone until you no longer want that message to be in the message archives to be re-sent. This also makes it very easy to organize your messages and items. Instead of piling them all into one box, making a big confusing mess, each message has a separate prim to keep things organized.

To send a message to your subscription group, rez an "IM Machine - subscribers" box and edit the .settings notecard inside. For details go here.

BUILDING A CUSTOM KIOSK

If you are building a kiosk from scratch, all you need to do is copy all the scripts from any of the sample kiosks in the package into your kiosk, then configure your "!Kiosk Settings" notecard correctly, and you'll be up and running. There are three steps to copying all the scripts from a sample kiosk to your custom kiosk:

Copy everything from the root (display) prim of the sample kiosk into your display prim. I highly recommend linking your kiosk so that the display prim is the root prim to make things easier. If you ever plan on using the payments feature to collect money, you must link the display prim to be the root prim. Also, drop the scripts in one by one, not all at once. I have seen very weird things happen when too many scripts are dropped into a prim at once.
Copy everything from the sample banner prim into your banner prim, if you have one.
Copy everythingn from the sample subscriber button into your subscriber button, if you have one.
Now edit the !Kiosk Settings notecard in your display prim and customize the appropriate settings. Be sure to give your new kiosk your own unique kioskStyle setting. As you add/remove prims, be sure to change the prims setting as well to keep the number of prims accurate. If it is not, the kiosk may attempt to unlink some prims! if you are ever asked for link permissions and your kiosk is NOT in AUTO mode, click NO and go check your prims setting in your kiosk notecard, it's probably wrong.

Don't forget, the main display face of your kiosk MUST BE FACE 2. Use the tip above to figure out what face 2 is. Make sure face 0 is on top so it is "right side up".

I do recommend building your own kiosk from scratch, or at a minimum, replacing the display prim of one of the sample kiosks with YOUR prim. The reason for this is that I am contacted frequently to supply kiosks that are not mine, because the kiosk builder used one of my prims as the root prim, so I show up as the kiosk creator. If you use one of your prims for the root prim, you will show up as the kiosk creator instead of me, which will make it easier for people to contact you for a kiosk.

As you manually texture your other kiosk parts, keep prims to a minimum and texture sizes in mind. If you texture everything on your kiosk with 1024x1024 textures, it's going to take a long time for people to see your kiosk. If your kiosk has a lot of prims, you will get pushback from your customers that have tiny shops and limited prims. Always offer a "low prim" 1-2 prim poster version of your kiosk for those on tight prim budgets on small parcels.

If you would like me to personally review you kiosk before shipping, I'd be happy to! Simply send me a kiosk and I'd be glad to check it for any potential problems and give you some suggestions to consider to improve your kiosks. This can help you avoid big problems down the road so don't hesitate to send me a kiosk to review before you release them!

KIOSK MENUS

By default, the kiosks will show a MENU to the owner of the kiosk so that they can carry out basic maintenance tasks. This menu is DISABLED when the kiosk is in test mode, which you can set in the !Kiosk Settings notecard. In that way you can see exactly what the kiosk does when a normal user (not the owner) clicks it. Here are the kiosk menu functions from the owner menu. These have proven to be extremely helpful when maintaining a large network of kiosks owned by other people:

Help: gives the kiosk owner custom instructions (as defined by you) from your server on how to configure their kiosk, or any other help info you want to give them. This help is just a notecard that you drop into your server. You specify the name of the notecard with the kioskInstructions setting in your server.

Refresh: forces the kiosk to get updated data from the server. This will also happen automatically, if needed, when the kiosk receives a normal click, and every two hours when the kiosks check in.

Click: Lets the owner do a "non-owner" (normal) click to see how the kiosk works for a non-owner.

Memory: shows free script memory.

Reboot: reboots all the scripts, in case something has gone haywire.

Version: Tells you what the version number of the kiosk is.

CLICK COUNTS

The kiosks each keep a count of clicks in the description field of the kiosk object. This number can be zeroed out at any time the kiosk owner wishes to reset the counter. This will not affect the global click count displayed in floating text above the Kiosk.Net server.

This data is available on the website as well in your kiosk list so you can see how many clicks each kiosk has gotten since being rezzed.

The Server also keeps a running count of ALL kiosk clicks in the description field of the Server. Just set this field to zero if you want to start counting all over. As an example you might want to zero this out every time you publish a new issue of your magazine so that you can see how many total magazines you have distributed since you published the last issue.

ADVANCED KIOSK MODES

The Kiosk.Net kiosks are very powerful and operate in multiple modes to fit almost any need. The kiosks will literally morph into different types of kiosks on the fly, so you never need to go replace any kiosks if you try different modes. To enable these modes, just set the kioskmode setting in the !Settings notecard of your server and the kiosk will automatically reconfigure themselves as appropriate.

To see some graphical examples of kiosks in these various modes below, see the Kiosk Modes example page.

SIMPLE MODE

The first mode is the SIMPLE mode. In simple mode, the kiosks will all display the first texture found in inventory in the server (if there is more than one) and give out all installed objects in the server's inventory on click. This is the best mode for simple applications such as a basic magazine distribution kiosk that gets updated once a month with a new magazine issue object and a new texture for the kiosk. All that needs to be done is to change the items in inventory when you want to update the texture shown and the objects given out. No additional notecard configuration is needed.

SIMPLEARROW MODE

This mode is the same as SIMPLE mode with one difference, it allows you to show two user-defined navigation arrows so that kiosk users can cycle through the available textures manually. The textures are read from the server contents so there is no special additional notecards to configure for the textures. The arrows are not prims, they are a special texture defined in the !Settings notecard with the arrowtexture setting. This texture should be a transparent texture with whatever kind of arrow graphics you want to put on there.

In order for this mode to work, you MUST have face 2 be your forward facing display face on your kiosk.

This mode causes the kiosk to morph into a special object that allows the two texture laters - the arrow texture and the regular display texture - to be layered on top of each other, so that your normal display texture shows behind the arrows on the top layer. This is all done with ONE prim so there is no danger of rezzing too many prims for a parcel if you change to this mode.

Note that this mode cannot be used in a "double-sided" kiosk. Due to the texture layering trick, you cannot view it from the back side, so you will be limited to single-sided kiosks.

Here is an example transparent arrow texture. The transparent section of this texture is shown in white in this example:

Kiosk arrows

The user can simply click the left and right arrows to pick the different textures. Clicking on that texture above the arrows causes the server to send all of the items in the server inventory, just like SIMPLE mode.

Your special transparent arrow texture is set by putting the UUID key of the arrow texture in the "arrowtexture" setting in the !Settings notecard.

To define the two vitual arrow button regions on your arrowtexture, you set the "leftarrow" and "rightarrow" settings in the server. To define these buttons, use the special buttonMaker tool. Rez the buttonMaker tool and click Help for details.

Note that the first number in the parameter lists after the '=' for leftarrow and rightarrow is the face number, which must be 2.

IMPORTANT NOTE!! In order for this mode to work, the main display prim will automatically reize itself to .02m thick. This CANNOT be undone. The height and width of your display surface will not change but the horizontal width will *appear* to be slightly narrower, though in reality it is not. What this means is that if you are using mutiple faces on your main prim to display textures, you should NEVER use this mode or your main prim will be permanently resized to .02m thick!

Simplearrow mode also has one option to allow you to tell the kiosks to automatically return to the LAST texture found in your server's inventory after a set amount of time. So for example that could be your main display texture that tells people to click the arrow buttons to see more information, and the kiosk will automatically return to that last texture after a few minutes of inactivity (no clicking). To turn this mode on, set the backtofirst setting to TRUE. When this is TRUE, then the cycletime is not used for automatic texture cycling, but is instead used to specify the timeout value to return to the last texture after that much time of inactivity has passed.

CYCLE MODE

The next mode is CYCLE mode. Use this mode if you want the kiosk to cycle through multiple textures on the kiosks on a timer but give out different objects depending on which texture happens to be visible on the kiosk at the time it is clicked. In order for this to work, some configuration is needed. See the !Cycle notecard to associate lists of objects to give out with specific textures for this mode.

The data in the special !Cycle, !Auto, and !Virtual configuration notecards is in the following standard format:

button_name, texture_name,(object list)

Where (object list) is a comma separated list of objects to give out for that texture. For example:

button1,myTexture,myPrim,myLandmark,myFreebie,myFreebie2

This will cause the texture named myTexture to be put on the button named button1 and the items myLandmark, myFreebie, and myFreebie2 will be given out when myTexture is clicked.

Now, back to CYCLE mode. In this mode, button names are not used since there is only one "button" to click, the main display prim, so button names are ignored and you must use the special character '#' for the button name in this case. After the button name is your texture name, followed by a list of objects to give out for that texture. You need one line for each texture that is in your server.

To configure how fast your textures will flip on the kiosks, go set the cycletime setting in your server's !Settings notecard. You might experiment with a quick flip time like 15 seconds while testing, to make sure things work.

CYCLEARROW MODE

This mode is a variant of the CYCLE mode and is configured exactly the same as the CYCLE mode above, also using the !Cycle configuration notecard. Instead of the textures changing on a timer, they are controlled manually by the kiosk user by clicking on the left and right arrows shown on the kiosk. The arrows are not prims, they are a special texture defined in the !Settings notecard with the arrowtexture setting. This texture should be a transparent texture with whatever kind of arrow graphics you want to put on there. This texture will be laid on top of the normal display texture using a special technique so you will see both layers - the normal display texture on the bottom with the mostly transparent arrow texture on top.

In order for this mode to work, you MUST have face 2 be your forward facing display face on your kiosk. Note that this mode cannot be used in a "double-sided" kiosk. Due to the texture layering trick, you cannot view it from the back side, so you will be limited to single-sided kiosks.

Your special transparent arrow texture is set by putting key of the arrow texture in the "arrowtexture" setting in the !Settings notecard.

To define the two vitual arrow buttons on your arrowtexture, you set the "leftarrow" and "rightarrow" settings in the server. To define these buttons, use the special buttonMaker tool. Rez the buttonMaker tool and click Help for details.

Note that the first number in the parameter lists after the '=' for leftarrow and rightarrow is the face number, which must be 2.

IMPORTANT NOTE!! In order for this to work, the main display prim will automatically reize itself to .02m thick. This CANNOT be undone. The height and width of your display surface will not change but the width will *appear* to be slightly narrower, though in reality it is not. What this means is that if you are using mutiple faces on your main prim to display textures, you should NEVER use this mode or your main prim will be permanently resized to .02m thick!

Cyclearrow mode also has one option to allow you to tell the kiosks to automatically return to the FIRST texture defined in your !Cycle notecard after a set amount of time. So for example that could be your main display texture that tells people to click the arrow buttons to see more information, and the kiosk will automatically return to the main texture after a few minutes of inactivity (no clicking). To turn this mode on, set the backtofirst setting to TRUE. When this is TRUE, then the cycletime is not used for automatic texture cycling, but is instead used to specify the timeout value to return to the first texture after that much time of inactivity has passed.

AUTO MODE

In this mode, the kiosk will rez actual prim buttons that can be clicked on. In this mode, you can display a large number of items, all showing on the kiosk at once, that can be clicked to give out different things. This is a great mode to use for a freebie vendor if you have lots of items you want to be able to give out. In addition since each button has its own texture, you can have some great looking buttons on your kiosk that can show a lot of detail as users zoom in if you use a decent size texture on each button.

In this mode, you must give full definitions including button names in the !Auto notecard. The button names are how the server knows 1) which texture to display on that button and 2) which items to give out when that button is pressed.

The buttons are rezzed and arranged on the kiosks automatically. This is very useful if you will be changing the number of items you plan on showing on a frequent basis. Be aware that in this mode, your kiosks need one prim per button defined, so with a lot of items (buttons) you can start to use a lot of prims. This mode is just as easy to configure as the other modes, just drop in all the textures and objects just like the previous modes and configure everything with the !Auto notecard. The advantage is that all of your objects are all shown on your kiosk, there's no page flipping to see all the items. You can resize your kiosk in any direction and the buttons will automatically be rezzed in the right shape.

NOTE: in this mode, the prim buttons are ONLY rezzed in front of FACE 2 on your main display prim (where the kiosk scripts are stored).

There are some important things to consider if you want to use this mode:

There may not be enough prims on the parcel for the buttons to rez. In this case it will fill up the parcel and the kiosk will be missing buttons. If this happens, the kiosk will keep trying to rez more buttons every two hours. If you give these kiosks out to other people, and they don't have enough prims to support the kiosk, you will have problems.
The kiosks require LINK permissions to work. The kiosk will ask the owner for link permissions every 2 hours until they click YES on the link permissions request dialog.
The land parcel MUST have the Groups checkbox for "Create Objects" in the parcel options dialog on the Options tab checked. If the kiosk, which must be a member of the land group, doesn't have rez permissions, no buttons will rez and the kiosk will not work at all. The kiosk owner will get an error every two hours if this option isn't set and the kiosk is set to Auto mode.

VIRTUAL MODE

In this mode, you get the best of both worlds - low prim kiosks and as many buttons as you want to show with as many sets of objects as you want, all on a SINGLE prim, but with a little bit more work. To configure this mode, you need to use the special virtual button designer gadget called the buttonMaker tool included in your package to give you your "virtual button" definitions that go into your !Virtualbuttons notecard.

Once you have your virtual buttons defined, don't forget to drop your texture with your buttons into the server so that the kiosks will be textured with that texture, and remove all other textures in the server. The server will simply use the first texture it finds for the kiosks in this mode.

Note that you can actually put different virtual button textures on different faces of your display prim that give out different things. Each face can have unique buttons, unlike all the other modes above.

NOTE! The very first parameter for each button is the FACE of the prim. Be careful, if the face you are putting your virtual button textures on is different than the face you textured on your buttonMaker tool, you will need to manually correct the face. For example if you texture face 2 of the buttonMaker tool and define a button, then on your kiosk you texture face 3, you'll need to manually change that 2 to a 3 in the button definition so that the correct face is specfied. In short, make sure the face numbers for all the settings are always correct!

COMMON ITEMS SETTING

There is ONE exception to the common notecard format for the CYCLE, CYCLETEXTURE, AUTO, and VIRTUAL modes. For these modes, you can define one special line at the TOP of the list of button/texture lines in your notecard to supply a list of items to be given out regardless of which button/texture is clicked. In other words, a common item that will ALWAYS be given out no matter what button or texture is clicked, in addition to the items defined for that specific button/texture. This line must have a button name of "common", followed by a comma, then a comma-separated list of objects to give out.

For example, let's say you want a notecard named welcome_note and a landmark named LM1 to be given out for all textures defined in your notecard. Then you would define your common line like:

common,welcome_note,LM1

Let's say that one of your many lines defined for CYCLE mode is the following:

#,January_texture,January_issue,January_freebie

This line means that if the January_texture is clicked on the kiosk, you want the January_issue and January_freebie objects to be given out. Now since you have 2 common items defined, that means that both the common items (welcome_note and LM1) and the January_issue and January_freebie objects will ALSO be given out to the clickee in this case, so he will get a total of 4 items.

Kiosk Script Compatibility and Integration Guide

In general, it is most likely a very bad idea to add additional scripts to your kiosk.net system kiosks or server. If you want to add some additional functionality, and you have the source code to the scripts, please send me a copy and I'd be glad to see if there are any compatibility problems.

There are quite a few things that may cause very bad problems with the kiosk.net scripts. For this reason there is a very good chance that the scripts you want to add (which includes scripts in linked prims!) will cause serious problems with the kiosk.net scripts.

Here are all the things any additional scripts must never do:

The scripts cannot send any link messages in the 100-200 range to any prim.
You must not add any textures to the kiosk contents.
The scripts must NOT set the script access PIN.
They must not set any prim parameters whatsoever, this will interfere with the "arrow" modes.
They must not set any textures, alpha, or color on the display prim.
They must not make any HTTP calls.
They must not set floating text - it will be turned off.
If they do a listen or a menu, there is a very small chance there will be a listen channel collision. This can usually be fixed by rebooting the kiosk.
They must be able to survive a script reset with no ill effects. The reboot menu item will reset ALL scripts in the main kiosk prim.
The must NOT require group ownership (deeding to group) - this is not allowed by the kiosk.net scripts.
They must not receive email.
They must NOT call llAllowInventoryDrop().
They must not create or break links with other prims (lllBreakLink() and llCreateLink()).
They must not set or get the object description (llSetObjectDesc()).
If you are using the Payments module (for kiosk donations or subscription payments) they cannot accept money, request debit permissions, or call llSetPayPrice().

If you absolutely must integrate some no-mod scripts in the kiosk, you can send the list above to the scripts to the script writer and have them check their scripts for compatibility.

If you want to integrate another product's scripts into your kiosk, it may be possible if those scripts are in a linked prim. In that case there is a much smaller set of no-no's for scripts in linked prims:

The scripts cannot send any link messages in the 100-200 range to any prim.
If they do a listen or a menu, there is a very small chance there will be a listen channel collision. This can usually be fixed by rebooting the kiosk.
The must NOT require group ownership (deeding to group) - this is not allowed by the kiosk.net scripts.
They must not create or break links with other prims (lllBreakLink() and llCreateLink()).
If you are using the Payments module (for kiosk donations or subscription payments) they cannot accept money, request debit permissions, or call llSetPayPrice().

Your Kiosk.Net Server

This section contains information about your Kiosk.Net server. All the configuration options are documented right in the !Settings notecard. Refer to that card to see what each setting means.

Disaster Recovery

There is no possibility of disasters with the Kiosk.Net system. If your Kiosk.Net Server is ever returned to your inventory, just re-rez it, and click "Reg Server". Disaster averted! If you completely lose your server, just configure a new one with the same myID value as your original, click the Reg Server button, and you're back in business.

Make sure you pick up a copy of your server now and then to make disaster recovery extremely simple. Note however, that you should never have two servers sitting around with the same myID value in them. This actually won't cause any major problems, your system will continue to work, but what will happen is that the main server (there can only be one active at any given time) will automatically switch back and forth between the two servers as they check in every two hours. So make sure there is only one server active at any given time.

Moving a Server

You may simply pick up your server at any time and rez it somewhere else. Just rez, wait for it to reload all the settings, and when the server says "SERVER READY" click the Reg Server button and you're back in business.

Adding Server Admins

You can have multiple people help manage your server and network of kiosks online. They will have full power to manage your kiosk system, just like you. Here is how you add someone:

Edit your !Settings notecard in your server and add your admin avatar names to the othermanagers setting. List more than one person by separating their avatar names with commas. Save the notecard.
Wait for the server to read all the settings and say "SERVER READY".
Now have your new admin click your server and click Dashboard from the menu and go to the Dashboard page.
It will ask them to log in. They need to create an account by clicking the Create New User link under the User Name and Password boxes.
Once their account is created, have them go back to the server and click Reg Avatar from the server menu to link their avatar to their account. It will take them to their new dashboard page.
Now click on the server again and click Reg Server. This adds them as an admin for that specific server.
They should then be able to see that server in the "My Servers" list of servers after refreshing that web page, and you should see them in your "My Admins" section of your dashboard for that server as well. They can now see that server's kiosks as well in the Kiosk View.

If there are additional servers that your admin needs to administer, all you need to do is the following steps to register them on additional servers:

Edit the !Settings notecard and add them as an admin.
Have the new admin click that server after it reboots and select "Reg Server".

Note: only the server owner or people listed in the othermanagers setting will get a menu when they click the server. No one else can operate it at all.

Tip: you can have members of an SL group manage your in-world server (changing contents, settings, etc.) by doing the following:

Edit your server and set the server's group setting to the group you want to give rights to edit your server.
Make sure "Share with group" is checked on the server.
Set the properties on all the items in the server and set "share with group", including any server settings notecards or anything else you want them to be able to update. Now, if your admin is wearing that same group tag, then can edit the server, update items in the server, and edit any server notecards that are shared with that group.
Be careful that you don't cause the server to autoreturn by setting the group on the server to something other than your land group. I recommend sharing the server with your land group if possible so that the server won't autoreturn, otherwise you'll need to turn autoreturn off if the server is shared with a different group.

To delete other admins:

Remove them from the othermanagers setting in the server !Settings notecard.
Go to your Dashboard and look at your kiosks for that server. The admins are all listed just above the kiosks.
Click the red X button to the left of the admin you want to remove.

Server Groups

A Server Group is a logical cluster of servers that all use one database on the website. Each server in the group shares the same subscriber group, the same click statistics, and everything else connected with that particular myID value.

Server groups are very handy in a few situations, for example, you can run two incompatible network (server + kiosks) versions side by side using the same database. So for example you can migrate your V8 network to a V9 network by adding a V9 server to the Server Group. The two servers, and the kiosks connected to them, are incompatible, but the systems can run side-by-side using the same set of data stored on the server.

It can also be very useful for expanding past the 1000 kiosk limit (or in some cases, the limit may be lower if you show a lot of textures on the kiosks). If your server shows a consistent red light on the front, that means the machine is maxed out on the number of HTTP requests it can make and is overloaded. The way to fix this is to simply rez another server, add it to the Server Group (by giving it the same myID value) and stop giving out kiosks connected to the old server. That will help spread the load across mutiple servers, and using this technique you can grow limitlessly.

Another reason to use it is this allows you to distribute more than one kiosk using a specific mode. For example you can have one kiosk style that uses CYCLEARROW and another that uses VIRTUAL. Just set up two servers, set them to the two different modes, and add them to the same server group.

To set up a server group, all you need to do is make sure they have the same myID value and different myServerID values. That's all there is to it. All kiosks that connect to those servers need to have the same myID and myServerID values. Note that this is a new feature of the V9 system, however, you CAN put an older V8 system into a server group. For a V8 system, you can't specify a myMachineID - but the system uses that server's myID value as the myMachineID. So if you had two servers, one a V8 and one a V9, and set them both to myID=Joe's Real Estate, then the myMachineID for the V8 server is automatically set to Joe's Real Estate. So then you can give your V9 server a unique myMachineID (say, Joe's Real Estate 2) and they are now in the same server group.

Other Server Notes

Q: What happens if I delete a server from my Dashboard web page?

A: Your system will stop working. This is easy to fix, though, simply click your server for the menu and click Reg Server. You will be back to normal. No data will be lost.

Showing Your Kiosk List

You can show a very simple list of your kiosk locations on your own website or blog by using the following HTML. For example, if you have a Blogspot blog, just create a gadget in layout mode with the following code:

Do not copy the HTML source on this page for that line above! Your HTML source that you paste must have the '&' symbols in it just like it looks above. If they are all replaced with "%amp;", then it's wrong!

Replace the word YOURID above with your myID value for your system. You can also replace the default font color "black" above with another color, and the background-color value of "white" with another background color. You can use color names or standard CSS color hex values from that color chart, however you must replace the '#' symbol with '%23', for example Blue would be specified as color=%230000FF. You can control how many kiosks are returned with the count parameter, and the width with the width setting. You can also turn the frame border off with a frameborder value of 0 instead of 1.

This will allow you to have a small, clickable list of kiosks on your website or your Blogspot blog. This is a great way to help support the locations hosting your kiosks by sending customers to them.

Real Estate Listings

The Kiosk.Net system is ideal for real estate listings. Using the following HTML code you can include a list of your parcels on your own web page! The parcel listing will disappear if a kiosk is gone more than 5 hours so you never need to worry about stale listings. All you need to do is name your parcels appropriately and put relevant information in the parcel description and it will show up automatically in your listing.

Replace the word YOURID above with your myID value for your system. You can also replace the default font color "black" above with another color, and the background-color value of "LightGrey" with another background color. You can use color names or standard CSS color hex values from that color chart, however you must replace the '#' symbol with '%23', for example Blue would be specified as color=%230000FF. You can control how many kiosks are returned with the count parameter, and the width with the width setting. You can also turn the frame border off with a frameborder value of 0 instead of 1.

Known Issues/Bugs

There is a problem when using the '&' character in a myID value. This will be fixed in the V9 release, until then just avoid using myID names with a '&' in them.
Do not use the comma character ',' in any objects that you put into the server. A patch is available on demand to fix this bug, just let me know. Or, simply remove any commas in any object names you drop into the server.

FAQ

If you have any problems with your kiosks not updating, please read this FAQ:

Q: Why is there no hovertext option? I want hovertext over my kiosks!

A: Hovertext is usually a very poor option over putting the text on your kiosk texture or on the banner prim on top. Hovertext is just plain ugly, it doesn't look professional, it's impossible to position well, it bleeds through walls which completely annoys neighbors, it's impossible to adjust the height at all without using a separate prim... my earnest advice is... just don't do it! If you absolutely need it, you can drop in a simple hovertext script. But if you want your kiosks to look good, don't spoil a well-designed, classy, professional kiosk with hovertext.

Q: I need to shut down my kiosk network and I want all my kiosks to be deleted.

A: Please contact me directly for a special script I can give you that will cause all of your kiosks to delete themselves in-world.

Q: When I put my system into SIMPLEARROW or CYCLEARROW, my main display prim seems narrower and my transparent arrow texture hangs off the sides of the main prim. What is going on?

A: The reason it appears to be narrower is a side-effect of the special prim trick I'm using to get TWO textures to display on one side of one prim. The prim is not physically narrower, but the two sides of the display prim are a bit transparent. Your transparent arrow texture, however, extends the full width of the prim so it appears to "hang" off the edge. This issue is really visible with any of the framed kiosks that have prim borders around them. What I'd recommend you do is stick another prim that's the same exact size of the display prim immediately behind it, but make sure it not actually intersecting the display prim or the textures may not show correctly. That will help hide those gaps on the sides of the framed kiosks.

Q: Why does the "ignoreparcel" setting exist? I don't get it.

A: The kiosk system normally only allows ONE kiosk, per owner, per parcel. If another kiosk appears, the system attempts to merge the two kiosks in the database into one record - thereby preserving all the kiosk data. This will help you from seeing gobs of "duplicate" kiosks in your database, which would happen every single time someone picks up a kiosk and rezzes it again. When this happens, the kiosk owner gets this warning:

"This location has another kiosk registered in the database for the same parcel. If you just replaced your kiosk within the last two hours, everything is fine. If not, then you have multiple active kiosks on one parcel. You cannot have more than one kiosk per parcel owned by the same person. You MUST remove one, or contact the person you got this kiosk from for help."

Now the reason I send them to YOU for help is because there are cases where multiple kiosks owned by the same person on the same parcel may make sense. For example you may have someone that owns 3 kinds of stores on a sim that is just one huge single parcel. If they want your kiosk in front of all 3 stores, then you don't want them getting this warning every 2 hours per kiosk. So there is a setting in the kiosk's !Kiosk Settings notecard called ignoreparcel. What this does is basically turn off this multiple kiosk merge checking completely, which allows more than one kiosk per owner per parcel. So what you could do is, for special cases like this (and they are fairly rare), is set up a prepared kiosk specially for this case with ignoreparcel = TRUE set in the !Kiosk Settings notecard and have them just replace their kiosks.

The reason that this setting is worth all this trouble is because it saves you a ton of time in keeping your database of kiosks free of duplicate kiosks. However it is up to you to decide if you want to distribute ALL your kiosks all with ignoreparcel=TRUE already set, then there will never be any errors sent to people with more than one kiosk per person per parcel. There are downsides to doing this! If you do this, all click data, website link tracking data, and payment SLURL data is immediately lost when a kisk with ignoreparcel=TRUE is picked up.

Q: What is the "time" column on my kiosk list?

A: That is the time since that kiosk last reported in. Under normal circumstances, it should not be more than 2 hours. Anything longer than that means something is wrong. There are quite a few reasons that a kiosk can stop communicating to the system:

It was deleted.
The owner didn't set the group on the kiosk to the land group and group scripts are off.
The parcel owner turned off scripts completely.
There was a random glitch, perhaps an HTTP call failed for random reasons. In this case the kiosk will get caught up at the next two hour cycle.
The sim, or SL, is having problems.
The kiosk owner deleted all the scripts out of the kiosk (it's happened) or set them all to "not running".

Here's how to troubleshoot a "dead" kiosk.

The first thing to do is to click on the Parcel Name link for the kiosk, which takes you to a kiosk detail screen. From there, click the URL entry. This is the URL of the kiosk itself. If it is working normally, you will be sent to a screen that says "unknown command". This means the kiosk is there and is communicating correctly.
If this fails, the kiosk may have been deleted. Teleport out and see. Remember that fixed landing points and telehubs can make you land far away from the kiosk location - look for the red circle on the map and fly there.
If you click the green Reboot button, the kiosk will immediately reboot. This is a good thing to try if it's acting weird in any way. If however step one fails, you can click the Reboot (Email) button which will attempt to reboot the kiosk via email, which may take a minute or two. After a successful reboot, step one SHOULD work.
If the kiosk is there but is not communicating, check the group on the kiosk, then compare that to the land group. Then check the parcel options and see what the script settings are. Are group scripts enabled? They must be enabled for the kiosk to work correctly, and the kiosk must be in the land group (if one is set).

Note that if you do not keep your kiosk list clean by deleting dead/missing kiosks from time to time, any kiosk that hasn't reported in for over a month will automatically be purged from the database in order to keep clutter to a minimum. So if you want to follow up on any missing kiosks, do it before 30 days have gone by.

Q: Whenever my Kiosk.Net server gives something to someone, if they decline it, they can see exactly where my server is! People keep dropping into my office, is there any way to hide that SLURL when someone gets something from the server?

A: Unfortuantely, no. That's an SL anti-griefing feature so that people can find bad objects that are spamming them and abuse report them. There is just no way to turn that off. What I'd suggest doing is moving your server to a private parcel, private sim, or stick it in a skybox with a security orb to keep out unwanted surprise visitors.

Q: Can I change my server's myID or myServerID setting? How can I "rename" my system?

A: You can't. The myID + myServerID settings are the unique identifier for your system, not the server object UUID. If you rename either one in your server settings, the system will see it as a NEW server and add it to the database. If you do that, you will see both the old myID/myServerID on your dashboard. Remember that all your network data, such as click statistics and subscribers, are attached to your myID value. If you change that, all that data says with the old myID. The other problem is that you can't change all the myID/myServerID settings in all the kiosks, so once you pick those values and send out kiosks with those settings, you are stuck. Don't rename it. During testing of a new network, you certainly can, just be aware that the net effect is that you're creating a new network and all data will be essentially lost. And be sure to delete your old servers from your dashboard :)