Eurogamers - User's Guide

You can customise your homepage and the way you appear to your fellow Eurogamers, create your own Groups and join others, keep track of things that interest you, like activity on forum threads you're contributing to, and drag and drop new information feeds to fit your browsing habits.

You can also show off your game collection, and the games you're most looking forward to - information that others will be able to track through your public profile page. If you're a big fan of a particular game, you can see at a glance which Eurogamers already own it, and get in touch with them through the messaging system.

We'll be adding more features to Eurogamers on an ongoing basis, too, including blogs, and the ability to reskin the page yourself, so keep an eye open for updates.

The launch of Eurogamers is good news for those of you who continue to rely on Eurogamer.net for the latest news, reviews and features, too. We've introduced a new search engine, which allows you to track down specific content, as well as games, while our gamepages have received a significant revamp, allowing you to find the information you want easily. And colourfully.

Obviously, we've designed Eurogamers so that even a monkey could use it. And not just the really clever ones in Super Monkey Ball either, but the daft ones from Ape Escape. In fact, we rather like gaming monkeys - perhaps we'll set up a Group. In the meantime, consider this page your one-stop guide to all things Eurogamers, and read on to find out how everything works.

Your Eurogamers homepage

Setting up a Eurogamers account is easier than you think. If you've already registered with Eurogamer, then you already have one waiting for you. If not, pop along to the registration page and you can have it up and running in seconds. Once you're in, you'll find yourself at gamers.eurogamer.net, where the magic begins.

The main Eurogamers page is made up of various panels that list things like Groups, Messages and Active Users, and keep you up to date with Eurogamer content. Each box can be moved about simply by dragging and dropping it, like you would a window on your PC or Mac desktop. The top-right of each panel contains options to hide it (reducing it to a title bar until you expand it again), remove it, and in some cases edit the contents (allowing you to change the number of items, among other things).

The panels you see aren't your only choices, though. By clicking Add Stuff at the top of the page, you can add all sorts of other elements. Let's say you want a Eurogamer Reviews feed: simply find the panel called "Eurogamer Reviews", click "Add Panel", and it will appear in the top left of your Eurogamers homepage, flashing for attention. Cheeky devil. Perhaps you don't care about PS2 reviews but really want to see when a new DS review is posted: just click on the edit icon in the top-right of the panel to be presented with a list of check-boxes for various gaming formats. You can also change the number of reviews that make up your panel.

Most of the panels you can add are self-explanatory. RSS feeds allow you to keep in touch with news on other sites (traitor), and everyone knows what bookmarks are. But what are the other ones? "Your Interesting Threads", for example? Easy. Your Interesting Threads lists conversations in our forum that you've made it clear you want to follow by clicking "Mark Interesting". It's a way of keeping watch over things you care about, a bit like the GPS tag you slipped into the barmaid's purse.

So you've laid out the Eurogamers page the way you like it - and you've done a very good job, I must say - but perhaps you're not fond of the colour scheme. In which case, why not click on "Page Style" up top, which allows you to change into a different skin? We'll be adding the option to create your own skin soon, and publishers like Ubisoft are already preparing alternatives that match up to your favourite games.

Your Eurogamers profile

So that's your Eurogamers homepage, but what about your Eurogamers profile? That's the one that everyone else gets to look at when you meet in a dark comment thread and swap numbers. It lists your name and email address (if you like), where you're from, and a little blurb, which can be about anything you like. Maybe you have a witty one-liner you'd like people to see. We didn't, because we're not very funny. It's amazing we've held down this job for so long.

That's not enough though, is it? After all, if you leave things as they are, we're in charge of your face. Hardly appropriate. Best upload a picture, then. Click Edit Profile at the top of the page and you can change your details (or even hide them if you're a scaredy-cat), but you're more concerned with the option to upload a picture, which is found on the left. Click Browse, locate a .gif or .jpg image file on your hard drive, and click "Update Picture". Simple as that. The Edit Profile page also allows you to keep track of any users you're ignoring or blocking (like him), and any Reader Reviews you've contributed.

But of course, you don't just want to talk to people about games, you want to play them, and we are - as the Keeley Hawes thing up top explains - keen to bring people together in more ways than one. That's why we've got an Aliases page, where you can add your Xbox Live Gamertag, your PlayStation 3 Network tag and your Wii friends code, and tell people how to contact you in massively multiplayer games like World of Warcraft and using instant messaging programs. Do it, and that information will be visible on your profile page. By specifying your Gamertag, you'll also be showing off your GamerCard - and you can add a GamerCard panel to the Eurogamers homepage, too.

So there you go, your profile looks much nicer now. There's still something missing though...

(Who are these jerks?)

• Bertie
• craigy
• Ellie
• fatchris
• JohnnyM
• krudster
• M_Spitz
• Mugwum
• patlike
• rauper
• sharpkiddie