Using Second Life URLs (SLurls)

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A SLURL (Second Life URL URL) is a teleport link to a location in Second Life. If you have Second Life installed, using a SLURL will automatically transport you to that location inworld. If you don't yet have Second Life, you can join us for free!

Making beautiful SLURLs

The first step to making beautiful SLURLs is adding explanatory text and a picture (or even an IFrame) to give it more context and flavor. For example, say you've got an island in Second Life you want to invite people to. This base URL works:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Here/54/105/47

works, but tells you nothing about what you're getting into. Compared to this (click on it!):

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Here/54/105/47/?title=An%20island%20of%20fun%21

which is a little more descriptive.

You can easily make beautiful SLURLs with the SLURLBuilder.

If you're technically-minded...

Query string breakdown

  • Example - "?title=YOUR%20TITLE%20HERE!" changes the title.
  • Example - "?img=http://slurl.com/yourimage.gif" changes the image. Must be a full URL, and preferably a smaller image like 256x256 pixels or less.
  • Example - "?msg=Your%20text%20here." changes the description
  • Example - You can also combine elements. The first element in the URL should be preceded with "?", and later elements preceded by "&".
  • Example - You can also display your own web content by inserting an IFrame. This can't be used at the same time as an image, and will take precedence over an image if you try to use both.

Shortening SLURLs

SLURLs, especially if they have text and a picture included (see example), can get quite lengthy. This makes them difficult to paste into places like emails, which may have line breaks that mangle the SLURL. Plus, they look unsightly!

You can use a 3rd-party URL-shortening service to condense a SLURL and make it easier to share. There are dozens of these out there, including:

  • Snurl - No connection to SLURL, but the similar URL and basic stats tracking makes it an easy choice.
  • TinyURL - One of the first and most popular.

If you have a webserver with customizable redirect, you can do something similar. For example, try: http://torley.com/here

A SLurl (Second Life URL) is a clickable link that marks a location in Second Life. A SLurl can be placed on any web page, and clicking one will take you to a new page that shows a map of that location in Second Life. From that page, clicking once more will start the SL viewer and immediately teleport your avatar to the specified location in SecondLife. You must have SecondLife installed for your operating system to recognize and activate them because they are implemented as a URI scheme. To see what a SLurl webpage looks like visit SLurl.com.

See also

External Links