SasTech KioskNet

Object and Information Distribution System

KioskNet V9.4 "RE" Edition Documentation

Quick Start

Step 1: The first thing to do is configure your server:

  1. Find the object named "KioskNet Real Estate Server" in your KioskNet kit and rez it.
  2. Edit your server and edit the "!Settings" notecard inside it.
  3. Find the "myID" setting, right near the top. 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.
  4. Find the "website" setting about 2/3 of the way down and set that to your own website, if you have one. If not, delete everything after the '=' sign to remove that setting.
  5. Right under that is the "TP" setting which should be set to the SLURL of your in-world land store, if you have one.
  6. Save the notecard and the server will 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.

Step 2: Register yourself with the website

  1. Click the KioskNet 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.
  3. When that is done, click your server and click Reg Avatar (or Connect Me). 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 yet.

Step 3: Register your new server with the website

  1. Click the server again, and this time click Reg Server or Save 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 from the menu to refresh the page (or go there again from the server). You should see your server on your Dashboard page now.

Step 4: Configure a kiosk:

  1. Find the object named "KioskNet Real Estate Kiosk" and rez it.
  2. Edit the kiosk and edit the "!Kiosk Settings" notecard inside it.
  3. You will see a "myID" setting in there as well. Set the value to the same as your server and save the notecard.
  4. Your kiosk will now register with the system and take you to a kiosk configuration web page. Please load that page in an external browser and fill out the fields to configure that particular kiosk. Just make up some numbers for testing purposes.

After saving your kiosk data, click Kiosk View from the menu again on the website to refresh the page and your kiosk should show up.

At this point your sample system is ready and should be working. 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 a menu when they click a kiosk, they just get any items that you've put in your server to give out. 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.

Next Steps

Customizing Your Kiosk Texture

Your kiosk is now completely ready to use as-is, but you can make some changes to the kiosk to customize it for your own look and feel. To do this, you  need to edit the texture that is shown on the kiosk, and optionally modify the banner texture on top of the kiosk.

The texture shown on all your kiosks is stored in your server. If you edit your server and look in there now, you will see a single texture in there. To replace the texture on your kiosks, simply replace that texture in the server with your custom version.

I have provided the current texture in the server in a few different formats so you can easily made changes to it, or you can create your own texture from scratch. I highly recommend the Photoshop or Paintshop versions since all the elements are on different layers and will be much easier to make small changes. To download that texture, click here:

Once you have modified the texture to your satisfaction, save it as a PNG file, upload it to SL and replace the texture in the server with your uploaded texture [Note: see Other Notes section below if your lettering prims disappear after you put your new texture on your kiosk). Click your kiosk and click "Refresh" to update the texture on the kiosk. Once it updates, note that the red text prims (such as parcel size, etc.) are probably at this point in the wrong place! This is ok, all you need to do is edit your kiosk, edit linked parts, and move the special lettering prims to the right spot. You should turn on Highlight Transparent from your View menu so you can easily see the lettering prims.

Those special lettering prims are there to display optional pieces of data on your kiosk, which include parcel size, parcel max prims (including bonus), sale price/fees, rental fees, sim maturity level, and prim bonus. To make one of the lettering prims (each of which can show 5 letters) show parcel data, they must be named as follows:

Note that each lettering prim can only show 5 characters max, which is why some of the fields above need two lettering prims to display the entire field. So for example the Rental Rate spans across both prims named Rate-1 and Rate-2, which are placed right next to each other. If you need to show more charcters, you can add more lettering prims to extend that field by linking in another lettering prim and naming it the same as the one to its left, but increment the last number in the prim name. For example, if you wanted to be able to display longer Rental Rate strings, you'll need to link in another lettering prim and name it Rate-3 and place it just to the right of Rate-2.

If you do not want to display one of the optional items above, you can simply unlink and delete the lettering prims associated with that. For example, on the sample kiosk I do not show the Bonus Factor, so there is no Bonus-1 prim linked to the sample kiosk to show that data, but you could easily add one.

Always link your main display prim on the kiosk last (make it the root prim), this is very important. It should be the last thing you select before linking.

Your kiosk needs to know how many prims it is supposed to have, which is done via the kioskprims setting in the kiosk's "!Kiosk Settiings" notecard. When adding or removing prims to the kiosk you must go set the kioskprims setting in the kiosk to the correct number of prims!

Note that parcel sale prices are displayed without commas so you can show a max price of 99,999 on the kiosk. If you will be selling higher-priced parcels, be sure to link in aother lettering prim for the parcel price field. The sample kiosk already comes with two lettering prims for the price field for a total of 10 digits, which is plenty.

If you add another lettering prim and it is not working correctly, make sure it is actually linked to the kiosk.

Customizing Your Kiosk Banner Prim

To modify your banner texture, see Configuring Your Banner Prim.

Giving Items to visitors

There are two ways you can give items such as notecards or landmarks to visitors.

1) Distributing Items On Click

This is the process you use when you want to update what items the kiosk gives out and what textures it shows.

  1. Right Click and edit the KioskNet Server. Look in the contents. The server contains a sample notecard and a 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.
  2. Delete the sample notecard and replace it with your own notecard (or any object to give out, instead).
  3. Add any optional Objects that you want to dispense.
  4. Test by clicking a kiosk and selecting "Refresh" from the menu. Wait for the kiosk to udpate.
  5. Click the kiosk and select "Click" from the menu. Click the kiosk again. You should receive your notecard and objects immediately.

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

2) Distributing Items Automatically

You can also configure your visitor counter to send a welcome message and give out items automatically when someone visits the parcel. To do this, put the items you want to give out into the kiosk, then configure the kiosk visitor counter by clicking Configure from the kiosk menu. In most cases you should leave the scanner range on maximum (90m). Don't worry about the visitor counter finding someone that is not on your parcel - it will only detect and give out items to people on the same parcel that the kiosk is on.

Then list the items that you want to give out separated by commas on the configuration page. It is critical to note that this means you cannot give out items that have commas in their name, so be sure to rename any objects that you put in the server and remove any commas (names of landmarks usually contain lots of commas, for example). I also recommend that if you are giving out more than one or two items that you specify a folder to put them in so your marketing materials are not scattered all over someone's inventory but instead in one top-level folder in their inventory.

Note that the visitor greeter items cannot be updated very easily since they are placed into the kiosk itself, not the server. You probably should not give out visitor items that you know are going to change, such as a newsletter. Instead, what you might do is tell visitors via the greeter to click the kiosk for more details on the parcel and your company. Since items given out on click are coming from the server, you can easily update those items as needed.

Displaying Your Property List

The KioskNet Real Estate system is designed to display your list of properties for sale either on //sasun.info for the general public to use, or you can embed some simple HTML on your own website to show the same list. To see your default public view of your parcels for sale, click the "Go To Public List" button (just below your kiosk admin list). That is a public URL that you can give out and advertise for people to see your real estate listings without needing to set up a web site of your own.

Listing Format 1

The format of your web listing is as follows:

//sasun.info/re_public.htm?myID=YOURID&title=YOUR TITLE&subtitle=YOUR SUBTITLE

Replace "YOURID" above with your myID setting, and YOUR TITLE with whatever title text you want on your page, and the same for YOUR SUBTITLE. Optionally you can remove the &title and/or &subtitle options completely.

For example, here is my sample real estate listing page:

//sasun.info/re_public.htm?myID=Edition: Real Estate Sample&title=Joe's Real Estate
&subtitle=Please Contact Joe Bloe in-world if you have any questions.

This listing format can also be inserted as an iframe in your own website, using the following HTML: 

<iframe scrolling="auto" width="95%" height="500" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="1"
src="//sasun.info/re_public.htm?myID=YOURID>
</iframe>

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.

Listing Format 2

This format is a simpler, list format. The format is as follows:

//sasun.info/re_public.aspx?myID=YOURID&count=50&color=black&background-color=LightGrey
&font-size=medium&title=YOUR TITLE&subtitle=YOUR SUBTITLE

Replace the word YOURID above with your myID value for your system, and YOUR TITLE and YOUR SUBTITLE as in Format 1 above.

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 (#0000FF) would be specified as color=%230000FF.

Set your font size with the font-size parameter. Any valid HTML font size setting will work.

For example, here is my sample real estate listing page:

re_public.aspx?source=real_estate&myID=Edition: Real Estate Sample&count=50&color=Black&background-color=PowderBlue&font-size=small
&title=Joe's Real Estate
&subtitle=Welcome to Joe's Parcel listings! Please Contact Joe Bloe in-world if you have any questions.

This listing format can also be inserted as an iframe in your own website, using the following HTML: 

<iframe scrolling="auto" width="95%" height="500" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="1"
src="//sasun.info/re_public.aspx?myID=YOURID&count=50&color=black&background-color=LightGrey&font-size=medium">
</iframe>

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.

Sale Notifications

Included in your kit is a separate gadget designed to notify you right away if a parcel changes ownership, the Land Sale Notifier. Rez it on any parcel you want to be notified about, configure it via the notecard in there, and bury it. It will delete itself after notifying you of a change in parcel ownership. Any parcel sold that has a Land Sale Notifier on it will be marked as "SOLD" in your private and public real estate listings.

Other Notes

When you are looking at your kiosk admin list page, if you click the blue "i" button, you will go to a kiosk details view for that kiosk. Note the green button named "EZ Config" - this lets you remotely reconfigure any of your kiosks. You won't need to go visit a kiosk to update any kiosk settings, you can do it right from there for any kiosk.

There is a known problem with transparency information in .png files that causes your kiosk lettering prims to disappear after you retexture your kiosk with a newly uploaded texture. There are two ways to fix this. If your graphic editor has an option to save a .png with no transparency, do that and re-upload. Option two is to save it as a .jpg (90% quality setting recommended if available) and upload that instead, however use PNG whenever possible to avoid loss of quality.

If you are using the watchdog kiosk checker, it will inform you after a kiosk has gone dead or missing after 24 hours. That's another way you can automatically be notified of parcel sales as well as problem kiosks that need your attention (i.e. the sim is down for more than 24 hours) as an alternative to the immediate notification of the Land Sale Notifier.

Be sure to configure a texture to display for each kiosk via the kiosk config page - ideally a nice photo of the property. You can also just drop the snapshot into the kiosk contents instead of configuring the UUID on the kiosk config page. That texture will show up on your website listing. Please note that the texture is coming directly from a LL server and I have seen cases where textures do not show up correctly. This is something I can't control, but thankfully it is rare. The easiest fix is to simply take another photo and use that key instead. NOTE that textures dropped into the kiosk contents override the UUID setting in the kiosk config, so if you dropped a texture into the kiosk, you'll need to go replace it to change the texture for that kiosk.

The KioskNet Real Estate Kiosk system is a close cousin of the standard KioskNet kiosk system but with different features. Many of the documentation sections for the standard KioskNet system do not apply to the Real Estate version, however there are some sections that do apply if you would like to dig into some of these features. Relevant links are: