Your Squidoo Dashboard

We're a friendly sort at Squidoo and we'd love to see your smiling face. Of course, you don't have to show us your real face. A pet, favorite toy, or neat logo will suffice. We'd also love to read more about who you are, where you're from, and what you're up to.

Note about avatars: while we allow lensmasters to make R and X rated lenses, all avatars need to be G-rated for the general public. (Or else.) Thanks!

This "Lenses" tab screenshot layout is the same as yours. You'll see your regular featured lenses at the top, and your Work in Progress lenses in red at the bottom.

You can sort your lenses from this tab:

Lens Title: click on Lens to toggle your list into alpha and reverse-alpha order.

Rank: click to toggle from best to worst and vice versa. Remember, 1 is the best LensRank number.

Linkes: click to sort your list by number of likes. (These are Squidoo Likes, separate from Facebook Likes.) Then go give your less liked lenses some love.

Visits: by default, this shows only visitors in the last 7 days, as well as today's count, so if you see these numbers go down, it's because traffic counts from 7 days ago are dropping off.

$$$: everyone's favorite! Find out which lenses are making cold hard commissions and which could use some monetizing.

Edited: this tells you when the lens was last published. Readers and search engines love up-to-date content, so don't let your lenses get too stale.

Your dashboard gives only a few stats for each lens. To view more options for each lens, mouse over it in your lens list. Read on to find out what you'll see here!

When you mouse-over each lens on your dashboard, a little menu will drop down with more options for each lens.

Your lens title: clicking here will take you directly to the "view" page of the lens.

Edit: click here to go to your workshop and make changes to your lens.

Label: you can click this to drop-down the label menu. Note: you can only add labels that already exist. If the label you want doesn't exist, add it first in the left column.

Stats: get detailed traffic and royalty stats, including past payments and where they went (cash or charity).

Delete: should you need to delete a lens, gasp, you can do it here with your password. (See note below.)

Note about deleting lenses: if you're one of those people who likes to multitask and work on several lenses at once, this could be bad for your lenses! Just to make sure you delete the right lens, try rebooting your browser, log in, and go just to that lens to delete it. Otherwise, another lens you're working on could get trashed by accident.

Categorizing your lenses has never been easier! Now you can keep all those book review lenses separated from the 2012 Olympic lenses, and edit them all accordingly. In the left column, you'll see some links to manage your labels. Go ahead, play around!

You can assign labels to individual lenses by placing your mouse over their name in the lens list, then clicking LABEL. Your screen will expand downwards to show labels. Check or uncheck them and click SAVE.

The basics of your account are all configured in the Settings tab of your dashboard. There's a lot of stuff here, so we've broken it down into sections so you can find what you're looking for.

The top part holds "who you are" type info.

Username: you decide this when you register, and it cannot be changed.

Email address: make sure this is always kept up-to-date

Password: you should change this regularly for security reasons

Allow contact: decide whether or not lensmasters should be able to email you directly using a form

Safe browsing: if you don't mind seeing R-rated lenses, you can set that up here

Google Analytics: for the techies among us, set up Analytics here

Real name: who are you, really?

Bio: this is the default bio that will display on your lenses. You can change your bio on any lens at any time. It's great to have one version of a bio for your world champion pig racing lenses, and another for your paper-plate origami ones. Or whatever you're into.

Photo: this is the default image you'll see on your lenses. You can change them up between individual lenses too. Many lensmasters use this as their trademark, so anyone who comes to their lenses knows, "Hey, that's that girl with the watermelon icon!"

Spotlighted lenses: choose up to five of your own favorite lenses to spotlight

Profile and other links: want to be a hooked up lensmaster? Help others find you on Facebook, Twitter, your blog, and the like.

Use this section to decide how guestbook comments should appear, and when, and who can comment. This is the place where you can decide how much contact you want, and if spam is an issue, you can tighten up your security.

This section is very important if you want to make money on Squidoo and earn it as cash, meaning paid out in PayPal to you.

Your PayPal email address: if the email address associated with your PayPal account is NOT the same as the one associated with your Squidoo account, you need to enter it here to make sure you're paid properly. Read more about how PayPal works.

Default Payout Settings: when you create a new lens, these are the default settings that lens will start with. You can change individual settings on any lens at any time.

Cash Payout Threshold: the default minimum amount we'll send you via PayPal is $10, but you can set it as low as $1.

Individual Lens Settings: view and change settings for each of your lenses.

Payout History: Track all your previous payouts and donations. You can look at month to month, lens to lens, or lifetime of your account.

"So what's the tax information line about?"
Great question! If you live in the United States and your lenses earn you $600 or more per year in cash, we'll need your tax info for Uncle Sam. You don't HAVE to share it with us, but we won't be able to pay you until you do. So check it out if you see that link. Live outside the US? Don't worry about it, and just let us know your address if we contact you personally.

More important details are found in the third part of your My Profile page, under the Account Settings header.

Email address: change your email address here. (If you don't use this email for PayPal, read this module carefully for details!)

Password: change your password here. If you've had your password reset, we recommend changing it once more on your own to something you'll remember.

Safe Browsing: when you're logged in, you can choose what type of content you want to see. If you want to see only G rated content, set it to "Show G-rated only." If R doesn't bother you, set it to "Show G and R-rated lenses." And if you don't mind the whole shebang, set it to "Show all! G, R, and X."

Allow Contact? this option enables a contact form so visitors can get a hold of you. Angels, Giant Squids, and groupmasters frequently use this to leave feedback about your lenses that you might not want everyone else to see. But if you want to be left alone, we respect that too. (BTW, you won't see this on your own account when you're logged in.)

Open external links in new window: this is a setting that shows only for you. It's helpful if you want to keep tabs on a lens you're reading, while also allowing links you click to open in new tabs or windows.

Account Status: if you're ever itching to leave us, you can delete your account here, by clicking "change" and then the big orange "Delete Account" button. But be sure - deletion is forever.

Set available options for displaying or opting out of ads.

Decide whether you want to play along and get more info on what it all means.

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