Google__ The Missing Manual - Kevin Purdy [11]
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You can also decide which tabs you want to include in the gray bar that lists Posts, About, and so on. The first two tabs—Posts and About—are always visible; you can’t turn them off. But if you click the Photos, Videos, or +1’s tab while editing your profile, you’ll see a “Show this tab on your profile” checkbox; turn it off to hide that particular tab from everyone, or turn it on to display the tab. (Alas, you can’t set custom visibility options for these tabs like you can with other sections of your profile—it’s all or nothing.)
All done editing? Mouse up to the red bar at the top of your profile and click “Done editing.”
If all the buttons on Google+ were as clearly labeled as the “Done editing” button, this book could be mighty short. Luckily for your humble author, the “View profile as” box in the upper right of your profile provides just the kind of mystery this book can solve.
This box lets you test out all the visibility options you set up for your profile page. Click it, and then click the “Anyone on the web” option that appears in the drop-down menu. Your profile page will re-load to show what people without any special connection to you can see. (The one exception is the red “Viewing profile as” bar that appears at the top of your profile, which no one besides you can see.)
If you already have a few people in your circles, you can start typing someone’s name in the “Viewing profile as” box on the red bar, and then select their name when it appears in the drop-down list to preview what that person can see. It almost goes without saying what a good idea it is to use this feature to preview what bosses, editors, overbearing friends, and all those other question marks in your social networks can see.
If you’re comfortable with what appears in the preview, click the Done button. Otherwise, click Edit Profile to take another crack at tweaking your visibility settings. Then preview how your profile looks to various people until you’re comfortable with who can see what.
Congratulations—you’re officially on Google+! You’ll definitely want to come back and edit your profile again as you add people to your circles, start using Google+ a bit more publicly, and learn more about how the site works. For now, though, you’ve got a profile that lets your friends find you, gives strangers just enough information, and keeps your misguided attempt at Lost fan fiction from dominating the Google search results for your name.
NOTE
If you own or manage a business, brand, or organization that wants to have a presence on Google+, you can do that as long as you’ve already set up a regular Google+ account. For the low-down on setting up Pages—a new feature that lets companies and other groups connect to people on Google+—head to this book’s Missing CD page at www.missingmanuals.com/cds.
Now that you’re up and running with a Google+ account and a profile, you’ve likely got a few questions about what circles are and how they work. Luckily, circles are the subject of the next chapter.
Chapter 2. Managing Contacts with Circles
NOW THAT YOU’VE GOT YOUR PROFILE SET UP, you’re ready to explore circles, the heart of Google+. Circles are groups of contacts that you organize however you like. You can give your circles whatever names make sense to you, since the people in them can’t see these names. You probably already make circles in your head whenever you’re looking to make plans: the friends with young kids who probably aren’t free, the friends who don’t get along with each other, the friends who live in another city, the relatives who are loving and dear but almost certainly won’t fit in with your friends who obsess over True Blood.
NOTE
Other people can’t see who you put