Get a Personal URI (a/k/a WebID?) in 5 minutes or less!

By the end of this Quick Tutorial you will have:

• Your own Personal URI, or WebID?, which will be valid for linking to/from any Linked Data service.
• Your own Data Space with Profiling, Social Networking, Blog, and Wiki capabilities, which is fully compliant with Semantic Web and DataPortability standards.

Step 1

Go to an OpenLink Data Spaces? (ODS) instance, such as the MyOpenLink? WebID? server, http://id.myopenlink.net/ods/.

Step 2

Click the Sign Up link, found in the top right hand corner --

Step 3

1. Create a new account on this service, by one of these methods
   
   
   
   
   • Click to the WebID? tab, to use an existing WebID? from another site, whether ODS or otherwise;
   • Click to the OpenID? tab, to use an existing OpenID? from another provider (such as LiveJournal? or MyOpenID?);
   • Click to the Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn? tab, to use existing credentials from these sites;
   • Or stay on the Digest tab, specify a new login name, provide a valid email address, and set a password.
2. Review the Terms of Service, and tick the checkbox.
3. Click the Sign Up button.

Step 4

1. After you've logged in, there will now be an Edit Profile link on the ODS toolbar. Click it to edit your profile.
   • Add personal information such as your name, gender, birthday, and personal webpage.
   • An important field on this form is the Other Identity URIs (synonyms), which links your ODS URI with other identities on the web.
   • More tabs allow you to enter details about your Contact information, your Home location, and your Business/Work details. You can even hook it into various systems such as Amazon, Ebay, Facebook, Flickr, and Google.
   • There is a Made tab, which will link your ODS identity with various other resources that you have made on the Web; for example, YouTube videos, Wiki pages, or Blog articles.
   • The Related tab is used for creating custom Semantic triples, and could be used for linking to another page/resource about yourself.
2. Make sure that you click the Save button after making all your changes.

Step 5

Now that you have finished editing your profile, you have a fully de-referenceable WebID?, or Personal URI.

If you click on your username on the top right hand corner, it will take you to your profile page and the address in the browser will be your Personal URI. If you are using the MyOpenLink WebID server, it will be of the form:

http://id.myopenlink.net/dataspace/person/<Your-Username>#this

For example, my personal URI is:

http://id.myopenlink.net/dataspace/person/kidehen#this

All done!

You can now explore OpenLink Data Spaces? (ODS) a bit more. There are some applications you can instantiate such as blogs, wikis, and feed readers. You can also use this system as an OpenID? server when signing up for services on other third-party websites.

CategoryTutorial CategoryODS CategoryEvangelism CategoryDataSpace CategoryVOS