One of the first things you'll want to do in the Community section of the SweepsU.com site is to create a profile. Your profile gives the other users a glimpse of who you are and helps us to build our SweepsU.com community.

From the SweepsU.com home page, you'll click on the Community link. Once on the Community page, you'll click on the profile tab. Let's start with uploading a photo or avatar, shall we?

Click on "change profile picture." You'll be able to upload a photo of yourself or an avatar that you've created. (A couple of my favorite sites for creating avatars are http://www.doppelme.com and http://www.planetcreation.co.uk/createpic) Please pay special attention to the size of the photo/avatar that you're uploading. If you're having trouble uploading your photo 9 times out of 10 it's because the file size is over 2MB.

Once you've put a "face" on your profile, you'll need to add your basic information. To do this, you'll click on "edit profile." Here, you can enter as much or as little information about yourself as you choose. Please note that the birthday field is in the European format of DD/MM/YYYY.

There is also a status update on the profile page much like a facebook or twitter status. In order to update your status, look for the pen and paper icon immediately to the left of your profile picture. Click on it and edit your status. Your status will then show in the "recent activities" section of your friends' profiles.

Finally, we come to the most important feature of the profile section: Privacy. You're able to choose with whom to share your profile information. From the profile page, simply click on "privacy" to change your settings. The best part is that you can choose different settings for different parts of your profile. For instance, you can choose to share your basic info with all SweepsU.com users and your uploaded photos only with friends. Or you can share everything with everyone. You can customize these settings to ensure your comfort with the level of privacy your profile has.