Tag: Web User Group 2026

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday February 4th 2026. These notes form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. Pantera’s video is embedded at the end of this article, my thanks to her for providing it.

Meeting Overview

• The Web User Group exists to provide an opportunity for discussion on Second Life web properties and their related functionalities / features. This includes, but is not limited to: the Marketplace, pages surfaced through the secondlife.com dashboard; the available portals (land, support, etc), and the forums.
• As a rule, these meetings are conducted:
  • On the first Wednesday of the month and 14:00 SLT.
  • In both Voice and text.
  • At this location.
• Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
• Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Updates

• The past month has largely been focused on planning and information gathering as the Web team works out priorities for the year ahead. As such, direction an initiatives may change as decision are made based on information gathered.
• Current work in progress:
  • Marketplace responsiveness work (i.e. making it more Mobile-friendly), particularly focused on the Marketplace home page and including things like category total to the site navigation sidebar, possibly making the Feature Items on the page high contrast.
  • Refresh of the viewer log-in splash screen, described as “same item, just a different arrangement”. This will b an iterative process within viewer releases as updates are made.
  • Possibly adding the long-requested ability to search by region on the web maps – although this is described a “complicated”. This work might also include some clean-up of other web maps issues that have been raised.
  • A clean-up of legacy codebases.
  • Upgrading the log-in infrastructure.
  • Release of the viewer log-in email modal, asking people to make sure they have a valid email address on file with LL.

In Brief

Also refer to the video.

Marketplace

• Question to attendees:  if you were a merchant, which Marketplace page would you like to have responsive and would be the most useful to you? currently, Search and listing pages are responsive.
  • This got side-tracked somewhat be a request for data on the number of Mobile users using the Marketplace and questioning why Mobile users would want to have access to the Marketplace, given “they can’t wear anything” (so what? I frequently brose the MP via my PC’s browser without having the viewer running; doesn’t stop me from buying stuff for later, even if I cannot wear it when using my browser; the same is likely true for established users on Mobile).
  • In terms of Mobile responsiveness and merchants – would a merchant use Mobile to manage their listings, etc., over logging-in via their desktop / laptop and managing their stores?
  • A broader preference was expressed for the consumer experience on on Mobile to be more responsive.
• The Variants / Style work – allowing one listing to have all the colour options for an item – which under Reed Linden’s time at the Lab was a focus to the point of being promised at the “first deployment” in 2023 – appeared to ultimately get swallowed by a black hole. There may be a (further) move to get it back onto the roadmap.
• A discussion on providing the cost of items in two currencies on MP listing – L$ and local currency (or USD), the idea being to put how much items in SL cost in real terms to help new users. There are complexities to this.
• Suggestions for the  “Related Items” in listings  should also have:
  • A “Quick Buy” button to add them to the shopping cart without having to open the actual listing and then add it.
  • A “Quick Demo” button to obtain the demo of an item (if the creator provides one) without having to go to the main listing and then click on the demo link and then add the demo to the shopping cart.
  • Both of these options could also be added to Search results as well, allowing people to click through a list of search returns and add the items they want to their cart.

General

• Question to attendees: which web property would you like to see all nicely polishing and “finished”? Maps was inevitably referenced (as was having the SL Map on the viewer splash screen – which is most certainly a non-trivia project to undertake, together with specific pages in the MP and web search.
  • My preference would be for the Second Life dashboard to be overhauled (elements made more directly accessible, navigation improved, use of drop-downs for things like Groups and Friends lists, options for better input from LL – such as “mini posts” offered as pop-ups within the dashboard, as was once the case, etc.). The dashboard is a core centre for information but looks terribly dated in layout.
• Canny often receives suggestion for new Canny categories. Should these be submitted individually or as a “group” of suggestions? Group them.
• It is unlikely that Web User Group meetings will move to a more frequent cadence than once a month as some have requested (ironically, they have also stated other meetings can be “dry” – possibly as a result of them being held too frequently, leaving some meetings with little to discuss).
• Several subjective opinions were expressed:
  • Banning gacha because “I don’t like them” (so don’t use them – and let those who do carry on).
  • No icons in MP category listings because “I hate them”. Well, they serve an accessibility purpose and are cross-language –  although subjectively, I’d personally like to see some of them made more relevant to their category – what has a figure apparently hanging by one hand from an invisible branch have to do with “Apparel”? Why not an icon an actual item of apparel – pants or a shirt or a dress? If people have to decode an icon by reading its label, then the point of the icon is lose.
  • The icons discussion led to a suggestion that LL should see if descriptions / definitions could be added to categories, so that a mouseover or click would display them.
• A general discussion on whether gacha items are “use items” or not (yes and no) and to whom the gacha market is aimed.
• Various discussions on payment methods and other topics in the last third of the meeting.
• Whilst not a topic for this meeting, it was suggested that the SL URL create.secondlife.com is confusing, suggesting it is for general content creation, whereas the actual portal to which it resolves is focused solely on SLua / LSL scripting(why not script.secondlife.com?).

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, March 4th, 2026.

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday January 14th, 2025. These notes form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. Pantera’s video is embedded at the end of this article, my thanks to her for providing it.

Meeting Overview

• The Web User Group exists to provide an opportunity for discussion on Second Life web properties and their related functionalities / features. This includes, but is not limited to: the Marketplace, pages surfaced through the secondlife.com dashboard; the available portals (land, support, etc), and the forums.
• As a rule, these meetings are conducted:
  • On the first Wednesday of the month and 14:00 SLT.
  • In both Voice and text.
  • At this location.
• Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
• Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Updates

• The past month hasn’t been very active for the web team due to the holiday season. There has been a focus on internal updates, security patching, and clean up.
• Some of the above include:
  • Additional security features around marketplace to increase security and add resilience.
  • Version upgrades to LL’s internal services for security upgrades.
  • Upcoming security feature to nudge residents to update and verify their email address on file.
• There is also something of a focus on trying to clear-up outstanding Canny issues (so maybe this and this will get addressed?).
• There is a hope that the focus on back-end services, whilst not necessarily visible to users will this help to see the overall experience of using the Marketplace, etc., become far smoother with fewer outages, issues with people being overcharged for product listing enhancements (PLEs), etc.
• A significant push for 2026 will be “first impressions” / the new user experience -trying to further improve things so that incoming users have a generally positive experience which encourages them to keep logging-in.

In Brief

• Kali Linden departed the Lab around the end of November / beginning of December to become VP of system security at a new start-up. Many thanks to her in absentia for all her work a LL.
  • As a result of this, the Lab’s web engineering are operating on a “shared ownership” basis until someone can be hired-in to fill Kali’s role.
  • Kali’s departure also means that some of the planned roadmap for web properties (e.g. the Marketplace UI overhaul) are being reassessed in terms of what can / should be achieved, etc.
• There have been reports of the SL forums running “slowly” for people in the UK (and Europe?). The Forums are operated by a third-party supplier, and somewhat outside of LL’s direct control. This has been escalated to the forum vendor, but not other updates at present.
• A request was made to be able to transfer L$ amounts between accounts / to others via a user’s secondlife.com Dashboard – with suitable security in place.
  • This was seen as an “interesting” idea, but would likely require some additional security – such as being tied-into MFA.
  • No commitment was made towards implementing the idea at this time, because further investigation on requirements, etc., would be required.
  • A suggestion was made to set a limit on how much a user directly transfer – or allowing a user to set a limit on the amount (e.g. account-to-account, rather than via a vendor or similar system) at any one time, in order to safeguard accounts against being emptied if successfully hacked. This was also seen as potentially interesting, but could be a  dynamic / fluid set of rules.
• LindeX use, transaction fees, etc., came up for discussion (although perhaps better placed at the content Creation meeting, where people who routinely cash-out from SL are liable to be in attendance).
  • A loose consensus at the Web meeting was that greater clarification should be given as to what can be paid for directly using L$ / the USD wallet &without incurring additional processing fees (e.g. some users apparently think they have to convert L$ to dollars in order to pay their tier, etc.).
  • A clearer break down of the current transaction fees in a single place (buy for L$, credit processing for cashing-out, cost for subscribers, etc.) could perhaps be given within the Dashboard.
• A discussion on SL maps – including searching by region name, improving World Map tile resolution, enhancing the map capabilities in general, etc.
  • A fair point was made that the maps are a core way of expressing the size and persistence of SL – yet the capability and the functions around it are perceived as being of little interest to LL management when it comes to prioritising updates, etc., with the focus appearing to be only on areas that directly affect commence in SL.
  • Maps are a vital component in the “first impression” aspect of Second Life – if incoming users can be encouraged to understand the SL is bigger than the welcome hubs and the selected destinations beyond them – and that they can, using the maps – explore on their own / in conjunction with the Destination Guide, then there is a motivation for them to keep logging-in and to start exploring.

Next Meeting

• Wednesday, February 4th, 2026.