The community features throughout epilepsy.com are designed to help users meet and interact with new people. To facilitate this, a "My Buddies" tool is available to logged-in members. Adding buddies allows you to keep track of your friends and see if they are online at the same time as you.

Adding Buddies
Buddy information is stored with your account, and your account details are stored in the gray bar near the top of the page (just below the logo). To see the users that are currently online, click the "Users Online" link. You will see a hover window which lists all active members. To learn more about these members, simply click their username. If during registration they opted to make their profile public, you will see the information that they have opted to share - this might include gender, age, location, hobbies/interests, etc. To request that a member be your buddy, simply click the green "+" icon. The other member will receive a notification of the request and may either accept or reject you as a buddy.

Once at least one buddy has accepted your request, you will see a "My Buddies" link in this same gray bar, indicating how many of your buddies are currently online. Clicking on this link will produce a similar hover image to the previous step whereby you can see who is online.

Managing Your Buddies
If at any time you wish to remove a buddy from your buddy list, click the red "-" sign from within the "My Buddies" hover. The buddy will be immediately removed from your list.

Checking Your Profile
For other users to find you and include you as a buddy, you should ensure that your profile is set to be public. This way, you can share some details about yourself for other members to learn about. To check your profile settings, click the "Manage My Account" in the top gray bar. Click the orange "Edit Account" button to go to your account. From there, click the "Community Profile" tab. On this page you will see a list of questions. Fill out any (or all) details that you wish and keep the boxes checked for all information that you are willing to share with other epilepsy.com members. At the very bottom of this page is a checkbox for "Make Profile Public." Ensure that this is checked and click "Submit and Login" - members will now have no trouble learning more about you and potentially adding you to their buddy list!

Learn more about Creating an Account and Managing Your Account.