Kitely Blog

Kitely Market is a virtual goods marketplace that will create a unified market out of the separate grids that make up the Hypergrid metaverse. This will enable content creators to make serious money, while setting up only one store. We’re currently offering incentives to merchants who set up their stores before Kitely Market opens.

With the launch of the Kitely Market so close, we wanted to remind content creators about our Featured Merchants program. If you earn Featured Merchant status then your store’s logo will be prominently displayed in the Kitely Market home page for a full year. Here’s what this will look like:

In addition, the Kitely Welcome Center world (which is currently under construction) will include a billboard ad for your store, and a gateway to your Kitely-based in-world shop (if you set one up).

Featured Merchant status can really help your sales, and the number of available slots is limited so you should act now to get it! In order to be considered for Featured Merchant status you’ll need to:

• Create a Kitely Market store with a description of your store’s brand, a banner image, and a thumbnail image of your store’s logo.
• Add at least 100 high quality product listings that adhere to our guidelines. Close variations of the same item (e.g. the same shoes in different colors) will only be counted once. Items that are mostly made up of third-party content will not be counted.
• Send us an email and request that we review your store for consideration for Featured Merchant status.

Normally there’s a fee of 100 KC to add a product to the Kitely Market, and 25 KC to add a variation (Update October 5, 2013: Kitely Market listing fees have been eliminated). However, we are offering a limited-time promotion to encourage merchants to add products now, so that they’ll be ready once the Kitely Market opens for buyers. This means that it would be a good idea to get started on creating products now, before our normal rates kick in.

For a limited time, this promotion includes the following benefits:

• Add 20 products to your store for FREE (no listing fees).
• If your first 20 product listings adhere to our guidelines then you may request to be allowed to add an unlimited number of products to your store for free. The link that will allow you to send us this request will appears once you’ve added 20 products to your store. This benefit is unrelated to the Featured Merchants program: anyone can request it.

The free listings promotion will expire once the market is open to buyers. However, Featured Merchant benefits will last for an entire year after the market opens for business.

See the Kitely Market Fees page for a complete list of our fees, our payouts, and additional details about this promotion.

Please note that there are no fees for uploading content in Kitely: only for listing products in the Kitely Market. Furthermore, if you don’t have a world of your own where you can import or create your products then you can use the free Kitely Merchants Sandbox.

We updated Kitely today with several features and bug fixes that were requested by our users. We are also making good progress on the Kitely Market, which is expected to open at the beginning of September.

Today’s release includes a full implementation of the shopping sequence: the shopping cart; buying through PayPal; viewing the shopping history and sales history (for merchants); email notifications; and sending payouts to merchants. However, since the market is not yet ready we have disabled the “Add to Cart” button, so you won’t be able to actually try out these features just yet…

Merchants: Setup Kitely Market With Your PayPal Account

At this time we ask all store owners to enter the details of their PayPal account into their store. We will use this PayPal account to transfer the store’s earnings to you.

For security, we require these PayPal accounts to be Verified. Learn how to Verify your PayPal account.

Enter your PayPal account details in the Manage Store page:

As agreed in the Kitely Mentors Group meeting (July 3), Money that you receive from buyers using US Dollars (USD) will be withheld for 45 days before being cleared for payout, in order to get past PayPal’s 45-day transaction-dispute window. It will then be transferred to your PayPal account in the next weekly payout date (once it exceeds the minimum payout amount).

Once the Kitely Market opens, you’ll be able to start selling on the Kitely Market even if you don’t have a Verified PayPal account, since the money that you earn will accumulate in your store’s Balance. However, this money can’t be transferred to you until you enter the details of a Verified PayPal account. If you don’t do so then we’ll keep your earnings in the store’s Balance for 90 days, at which point we’ll convert them to Kitely Credits and add these KC to your Kitely account. Therefore, we recommend that all merchants setup a Verified PayPal account and enter its details in their store.

Other Improvements

We made several improvements to the system in response to our users’ requests:

We’ve enabled the OSSL functions osGetGridName() and osGetGridNick().

We fixed a bug where invitations to join a group weren’t saved as Offline IM’s if the receiving user was offline.

We fixed a bug where when an avatar gives an inventory item to another avatar that is in a different region, the receiving avatar got two copies of the item.

There are two Store pages: “View Store” and “Manage Store”. To make it easier to switch between them, we added a direct link from the View Store page to the Manage Store page. This link appears only for the store’s owner.

It is now possible to include “hop://” URL’s in world descriptions. These are URL’s that, when clicked, automatically start the viewer and enter a specific region in a specific place.

When paying for a subscription that includes Unlimited Free Access worlds, the subscription name in PayPal now mentions those worlds. This is important for users that receive reimbursements from their employer using the PayPal receipt. For example, a subscription that uses the Free Plan with one Unlimited Free Access world was previously called just “Free Plan” in the PayPal receipt, but now it’s called “Free Plan + 1 Unlimited Free Access World”.

When viewing a world page, if the world has a premium price (X KC / minute) then that price is shown below the “Enter World” button. However, the price didn’t appear if the user had skipped installing the Kitely Plugin. This bug has been fixed.

During signup, we didn’t accept email addresses whose domain names start with a digit, e.g. “37signals.com”. Now we accept such emails.

Kitely Plugin now supports newer versions of Kokua. The difference is that these versions install themselves using the filename “KokuaTest.exe”, which wasn’t recognized previously.

And finally, we have removed support for Mac OS X 10.5 in Kitely Plugin: the minimum supported version of Max OS X is now 10.6. This was done because that version of Mac OS X is very old, and it frees up resources to support newer versions of Mac OS X. However, users of Mac OS X 10.5 can still start the viewer without Kitely Plugin.

We received a lot of feedback from our Kitely Market merchants that they want to see what their products will look like to buyers. So today we updated our system to allow merchants to use the Kitely Market search page, and to view the Product page and Store page that buyers will see.

Since Kitely Market is still in pre-release mode, merchants can only browse their own stores, and non-merchants can’t browse the market at all. Furthermore, the Store and Product pages aren’t quite finished: for example, the Product page doesn’t show Customer Reviews yet, and doesn’t allow actually purchasing the product. Nevertheless, they’re close to what the final pages will look like.

Search Page

The Search page is now live for merchants. For example, this is what the Search page looks like when viewing the store “Radius”:

This page is fairly intuitive, but we’d like to point out a few highlights. The left side of the page contains various ways to filter the search results: by category, attributes, and other filters such as Currency, Maturity and Permissions. The list of available attributes changes depending on the selected category. For example, the “Hair Color” attribute only appears if the selected category is “Hair”.

Whenever a filter is active, the Filters panel appears. This panel lets you quickly see which filters are active, and remove them. In the screenshot above, we clicked on the attributes “Human” and “Men”, so they appear as filters. (Note that “Category” isn’t considered a filter, so it won’t appear in the filters panel.)

A special kind of filter is the Store filter. Since Kitely Market is in pre-release mode, merchants can only search within their own store. This means that for now the Store filter is always present and can’t be removed.

Product Page

There are two product pages: Edit Product, which only the merchant can access, and View Product, which anyone can access (as long as the product is Active). When we use the term “Product Page” we mean the View Product page. You can access the product page either by clicking on a product in the Search page, or using the “View in market” link in the Edit Product page.

This is what a product page looks like:

You can view the live version of this product here. However, you won’t be able to buy it yet…

In this screenshot, notice the area that is highlighted with a red rectangle. That is where you can see the available variations and switch between them. In this product, the user can choose between several hair colors. Notice how easy it is to see all the available variations and choose among them: it’s much more intuitive than having to deal with multiple products!

The product page always shows the latest Active version of the product. If you’re currently editing the product then your changes won’t be visible in the product page until you save them.

Store Page

There are two store pages: Manage Store, which only the merchant can access, and View Store, which any user can access.

To get to the Manage Store page, use the new “Go to…” listbox at the top of the screen (you can see it in the previous screenshots). The Manage Store page hasn’t changed much in this release: we just added one link to it, “View public store page”. This link leads to the publicly-available Store Page, which any user can see. The public store page can also be accessed by clicking on the store’s banner image in the Search page.

Conclusion

With this release we’ve completed another big part of the Kitely Market, and it brings us one step closer to enabling content creators to easily sell to the growing OpenSim metaverse (currently comprising more than 300,000 registered users and 20,000 active monthly users).

If you’re interested in selling virtual goods in the metaverse then make sure to take advantage of our special offer of free listings and a chance of becoming a Featured Merchant. This time-limited promotion will end soon, so act now and start building your Kitely Market store today!

We updated Kitely today, and now Kitely Market merchants can take advantage of the Export Permission to decide whether users who buy their products can take them to other OpenSim grids. We also fixed several problems that were reported by our users.

Export Permission

The Export Permission specifies whether objects and assets are allowed to leave the Kitely grid. Merchants can enable or disable the Export Permission for each of their products in the Kitely Market. This is a very powerful feature, as it gives content creators the flexibility to choose whether they want their products to be highly secure (by restricting them to the Kitely grid), or to sell them to anyone in the OpenSim metaverse.

The Export permission works differently from the standard OpenSim permissions (Move/Copy/Transfer): instead of setting it in the viewer, this permission is set in the Kitely Market. The Export permission isn’t shown in the viewer. Content creators that add a product to the Kitely Market can choose whether to enable Export on their product by clicking on a checkbox:

When the Export permission is enabled, we show “E” next to all of the items in the product. This is simply a reminder that the items that the buyer receives will have the Export permission:

If the merchant adds any No-Export items to the product then the product automatically becomes No-Export as well.

When users buy a product, the objects and assets that they receive are tagged with the product that they came from; this enables us to track them and enforce their export restrictions. When users attempt an export operation we prevent No-Export objects and assets from leaving Kitely. This check is very strict: if an object contains even one No-Export asset then the entire object becomes No-Export. Currently the only export operation is “Export OAR”, but in the future we’ll also allow transferring items to other grids; that’s also a type of export.

Export OAR Respects the Export Permission

Kitely has a long history of allowing our users a lot of flexibility, while maintaining strict content protections. We’re one of the few commercial grids that allow exporting OpenSim regions to OAR files; this has been available since 2011. The Export Permission didn’t exist until now, so previously we enforced content protection by making OAR exports respect copy and transfer permissions. Today we’ve made two big improvements to the Export OAR feature. First, as explained above, we now prevent No-Export items from being included in OAR files. Second, after Export OAR completes, we now create an Export World Report that summarizes the contents of the world and which objects (if any) weren’t saved to the OAR file. You can view this report by clicking on a link in the same dialog where you download the OAR file:

Only objects that originated from the Kitely Market have an Export or No-Export Permission. Objects that weren’t bought in the Kitely Market can be exported if they have both Copy and Transfer permissions.

Here’s an example of a World Report:

Other Improvements

We changed how we resize product images in the Kitely Market. Previously, if the images weren’t in the correct aspect ratio (4:3) then we cropped them on the sides. This was inconvenient for people who have images in other aspect ratios because they had to either accept this cropping, or resize the images before uploading them. We’ve therefore stopped cropping images: instead, we allow them to occupy only part of the picture area, with whitespace making up the missing parts. That said, it’s still recommended to upload images with 800×600 pixels because they’re the most eye-catching for potential buyers.

We increased the maximum length of a product description in the Kitely Market from 2000 characters to 5000 characters. We increased the maximum length of a store’s About text to 5000 characters as well.

Some users with large inventories had difficulty logging-in to virtual worlds. This happened because on login OpenSim searches the user’s entire inventory for Gestures, so the time it took to login was proportional to the size of the user’s inventory. We added an optimization that eliminates this slowdown.

The LSL function llRequestUrl didn’t work, because it requires a server name but we used to return an internal hostname that was inaccessible outside of Kitely. We now return a public hostname that works correctly.

The “Show Objects” feature didn’t work in megaregions. This is a feature in the “About Land” dialog that lists all the objects in a parcel according to their owner. It used to work only in non-megaregion mode, but now it works in our Advanced Megaregions as well.

A few people encountered a problem logging-in using Twitter because Twitter have changed their API. We updated to the new API (version 1.1), and now Twitter logins work again.

Viewers support displaying up to 8 textures per mesh. There used to be an OpenSim problem with storing more than 6 textures per mesh; that problem has now been fixed.

We achieved a major milestone today with the completion of the first phase of the Kitely Market! Merchants can now create their stores, and we are offering a limited time promotion which can save you money and increase your sales with free advertising.

We also made two changes to our support infrastructure. First, we moved the forums to a new URL: https://www.kitely.com/forums/. Second, we created a documentation site at https://kitely.atlassian.net. Currently this site is focused on information about the Kitely Market, but in the future we’ll add other types of information as well.

Kitely Market

Kitely Market is now open to merchants! Content creators are invited to create a store and add products to it. The market is not open to buyers yet, but we are now working on this functionality, and we expect to have it ready this summer.

The rest of this blog post explains how to use Kitely Market as a merchant.

Create Your Store

Enter Kitely Market by clicking on the Market button in the toolbar.

Once the market is open to buyers this page will allow users to search the market. However, right now this page only allows you to create a store.

Click Create store, enter your store’s name and description, and click Create. This will bring you to the Store Home page.

Store Home

The Store Home page lets you manage your store.

Here you can change your store’s Name, About, and pictures. The banner picture will appear when users view your store’s products. The thumbnail picture may be used when searching for stores.

Click Manage products to add or edit products.

Manage Products

This page shows all of the products that you have in your store. Click Add Product to create a new product. This pops up a window with your avatar’s inventory. Click on the checkbox next to the items that you want to include in the product, and then click Create.

You must have Copy and Transfer permissions on all the items that you add to the product. After you’ve created a product (or clicked on an existing product) you will enter the Edit Product page.

(By the way, the products in this example are from Linda Kellie.)

Edit Product

In this page you can view a product’s details and modify the product. We have a description of all of these fields in the Kitely Market documentation page. In addition, we’ve created guidelines for creating good product listings. We’ll now describe briefly the parts of the Edit Product page.

The first part of the Edit Product page lets you set the general properties of the product, such as its name and category.

The next part of the page lets you add variations, and set properties that apply only to the current variation such as price and permissions. In this example the product has only one variation.

Next, you can set the product’s attributes. Attributes are used by users to refine their searches. You can choose which attributes apply to the entire product (on the left side), and which attributes have different values in each variation (on the right side).

Finally, the page shows all of the items in the currently viewed product variation, and you can set the product’s description.

Modifying a Product

If you want to modify a product then visit the Edit Product page and start making changes. These changes don’t affect the product in the market until you click Accept changes. Or, if you change your mind, click Cancel changes to revert the product to the last accepted state. Notice that there’s no “Save” button in this page: every change you make is saved immediately and automatically, but it won’t be seen in the market until you click Accept changes.

This concludes our overview of how to use Kitely Market.

Limited Time Promotion

Normally there’s a fee of 100 KC to add a product to the Kitely Market, and 25 KC to add a variation. However, we are offering a limited-time promotion to encourage merchants to add products now, so that they’ll be ready once the Kitely Market opens for buyers (Update October 5, 2013: Kitely Market listing fees have been eliminated).

The promotion includes the following benefits:

• Add 20 products to your store for FREE (no listing fees).
• If your first 20 product listings adhere to our guidelines then you may request to be allowed to add an unlimited number of products to your store for free. The link that allows sending this request appears once you have added 20 products to your store.
• If you create at least 100 product listings that adhere to our guidelines then you’ll be considered for Featured Merchant status. Featured Merchants will be featured for free on the Kitely Market homepage, and they’ll get free in-world shops in the official Kitely Plaza.

The free listings promotion will expire once the market is open to buyers. However, Featured Merchant benefits will last for an entire year after the market opens for business.

See the Kitely Market Fees page for a complete list of fees, and additional details about this promotion.

Please note that there are no fees for uploading content in Kitely: only for listing products. Furthermore, if you don’t have a world of your own where you can create your products then you can use the free Kitely Merchants Sandbox.

Sell to Multiple Grids

You can optionally enable the Export permission on your products. When this permission is enabled, users are allowed to take the item out of the Kitely grid. Initially this means that when users export their world to an OpenSim Archive (OAR) file, the item will be included in the OAR. Later we will allow Exportable items to be transferred to other grids as well.

Bugs and Known Issues

There are a couple of known issues in Kitely Market that we’ll fix in the next release . We didn’t want to delay rolling out the market for them:

(Update: these issues were fixed on May 22, 2013)

• In the Add Product dialog, when you click on a folder only the folder is shown as selected, but not the items inside the folder. However, these items are included, as you can see once you click on Create.
• If you try to Accept changes in a product that has some missing fields then you’ll get an error message. This message doesn’t specify which of the product’s variations has the missing fields; it might not be the variation that you are currently viewing.

If you encounter any other problems then please let us know in the Kitely Market forum.

A month ago we made a big improvement to our service with the addition of transfer stations. The transfer stations have been a great success, making logins faster and simpler. However, not everyone was happy with the appearance of the transfer stations, so we’ve spent the last few weeks working with the Kitely community on a new design. Here’s the new look of the transfer stations:

The new design was carefully chosen in order to avoid clashing with the designs of existing worlds, as well as rezzing quickly.

Several people from the Kitely community volunteered their time to help develop the new design. We’d like to give special thanks to Dot Macchi, who did most of the work, as well as to Ada Radius and Dennis Albion that assisted her in the process. We also wish to thank the 15 other Kitely users who participated in the forum discussions and in the Kitely Mentors Group meetings where we discussed this issue. Your helpful advice is much appreciated.

Today we’re pleased to introduce Transfer Stations, and several other improvements that make entering Kitely faster and easier. We also implemented a number of user-requested features and fixed some bugs.

Transfer Stations

A transfer station is a miniature world that is used for waiting while an offline world is being loaded. Here’s what a transfer station looks like:

Kitely is a cloud-based virtual world provider, so when you want to enter a world that is currently offline we need to start the world first. This is fairly quick, but not instantaneous. Transfer stations allow you to login to the Kitely grid immediately, even before the world is ready. Once the world you wanted to enter is ready you’ll be teleported to it automatically.

Transfer stations are used only for the initial login to the Kitely grid, i.e. when your viewer isn’t already logged into another Kitely world. If you’re already logged into Kitely then you’ll wait in the world you are currently in while the world you are heading to is being started.

If several people try to enter the same offline world then they’ll be placed in the same transfer station. This allows you to talk and chat with other people heading to the same world even before that world is up and running.

Transfer stations have several benefits:

• They reduce the time it takes to enter an offline world, because the time for starting your viewer is spent in parallel with the time it takes for the world to be started.
• They make it possible to enter a world by logging in directly from the viewer (instead of from our website). Until now every time you wanted to enter an offline Kitely world you had to go to that world’s World Page and click the “Enter World” button. This is no longer necessary.
• Once Kitely enables HyperGrid access, transfer stations will enable you to HyperGrid teleport into Kitely worlds even if those worlds are currently offline.
• You can start chatting, dressing up, and interacting with other people heading to the same world as you even before that world is ready.

You may remember that when we last talked about Transfer Stations we wanted to allow people to create their own transfer station designs. We didn’t implement this feature yet due to time constraints, because our current focus is on creating the Kitely Market. We intend to eventually enable this type of customization but this won’t happen soon.

Viewer Login Improvements

We’ve made it easier to find the information you need in order to login to the Kitely grid directly from the viewer. In the Settings page, we added a link that shows you your full login details:

This information is only needed for logging-in manually. It’s not needed if you use Kitely Plugin, since Kitely Plugin launches your viewer automatically without requiring you to enter any information.

Since it’s now possible to login directly from the viewer, we respect the login choices “Last Position” and “Home” (if the user had set a Home location).

Additional Changes

We fixed a bug in OpenSim that caused avatars to face East after a teleport. Now avatars usually face in the same direction as they had been before the teleport. (We’ve found that this still fails in Imprudence, which has a bug that often causes avatars to face North after a teleport. That bug is unrelated to our OpenSim changes, and it doesn’t happen on Firestorm.)

IM messages sent to a Group are no longer saved as offline messages. This was done because users have a limited number of offline messages that they can save (25), and an active group can easily exceed that limit. We do save Group Notices as offline messages, however, and of course any IMs that are sent directly to the avatar.

We changed the way we detect idle avatars in order to prevent you form being disconnected while you’re uploading objects using Imprudence’s content backup tools.

When you share World Pages on Facebook, the resulting post includes part of the world’s description. If the description included rich text (e.g., bold) then the Facebook post used to show HTML tags such as “<b>”. To fix this, we now remove such tags from the description we send to Facebook. If your world had this problem then change its description slightly; this will make us update Facebook with the new tag-free description.

We updated our system today with several features and bug fixes that make using Kitely easier. These improvements address the main OpenSim issues that were reported in our forums over the last few weeks.

Phantom Prims in Linksets

We now support a safe way to make prims phantom. But first, some background: content creators sometimes want to make a single prim phantom in a linkset. This is not directly supported by OpenSim (or Second Life), so people have come up with scripts that set the prim to phantom and make it remain phantom even if the linkset is taken into the inventory and then rezzed. These scripts are complicated and somewhat dangerous, because if they’re interrupted while running then the prim might lose some of its attributes.

Fortunately, now there’s a better way to make prims phantom: by setting the prim’s Physics Shape Type to “None”. Technically the prim isn’t phantom, but this has the same effect: it allows avatars to walk through the prim. You only need to set this attribute once, and no scripts are required. We recommend that anyone who is using “Phantom Child” scripts to make prims phantom remove those scripts and use this feature instead.

By the way, below the Physics Shape Type dropdown you can see a few other physics settings: Gravity, Friction, etc. These settings aren’t currently used in OpenSim. They might be used in the future, when OpenSim switches from the ODE physics engine to BulletSim.

Failed to find Bodypart in Database

Sometimes when users log-in they get errors such as “Failed to find Bodypart in Database”. These errors are shown when there’s a problem with one of the user’s Wearables (clothes or body parts). We’ve investigated this problem and made some fixes that should reduce the frequency of these errors. One of the reasons that these problems can happen is switching between V1 viewers and V2/V3 viewers, because they use different methods to store Wearables, so making changes in one viewer may not be visible in the other viewer. We’ve improved the situation but it might still occur. Another reason this problem can happen is because of a peculiarity in the way some viewers (such as Firestorm) tell the server when the user has worn or taken off something. We will contact the Firestorm team to ask them to improve this behavior, but for now this cause for the problem remains.

If you encounter this problem then please let us know in the forums, because we can enable additional logging that will help diagnose why this happens. This logging is done per-world, so we would need to know which world you are using.

Telehubs Without Spawn Points

When creating a Telehub, users are supposed to also create at least one Spawn Point. However, this isn’t always done, and telehubs without spawn points prevent teleports into the world (if Allow Direct Teleport is disabled). Since the user’s intent is clear (where they want people to teleport), we now treat telehubs without spawn points as if they have one spawn point in the exact location of the telehub.

We are continuing to work on the upcoming Kitely Market, and we would like to get your feedback on our categories tree and attributes. We’ve discussed them with the Kitely Mentors Group over the past few weeks and now we feel that they’re ready for broader review. If you have any comments then please discuss them in the forum. (The forum works better for extended discussions than commenting in the blog).

Items in the Kitely Market are organized into categories. Categories are groups of similar items, e.g. Shoes or Bridges. At the same time, items can also have attributes that describe them: for example, their Color or Material. Typically users first choose the category they want, and then refine their search by selecting some attributes. As an example of how this works, take a look at the Best Buy TV shopping page. In this example the user already chose the category (TVs), and the left side of the screen contains attributes: Screen Size, TV Type, etc.

The use of attributes allows us to make the categories tree relatively simple. For example, we have only one category for Clothing, instead of having categories for Regular Clothes, Wedding Clothes, Goth Clothes, Christmas Clothes, etc. Users who want a specific type of clothing can click on the Clothing category, and then use attributes to specify the type of clothes they want.

When we chose our categories and attributes, an important consideration was what to leave out. For example, consider the Color attribute. It contains only the main colors: Black, Blue, Bronze, Brown, Gold, Grey, Green, Orange, Pink, Purple, Red, Silver, White, Yellow. Having a limited number of options makes searching easier, because users can see similar items together. As another example, consider the Theme attribute: Arabian, Asian, Fantasy, Historical, Modern, Sci-Fi, Steampunk, Western, Other. Although other themes could be added, our goal is to provide values that match about 80% of the themes that people use. We don’t want to provide 100% of the possible themes because then there would be too many options to choose from. Note that users can still use the regular search field to search for any word that appears in the product’s description, even if it doesn’t have an explicit attribute. Having said all that: if you think that another category or attribute is needed then please let us know, but keep in mind that there is value in limiting the possible options.

Some categories and attributes are Adult-only, and will only be shown to users with an Adult maturity level. These categories and attributes have a star (“*”) after their name and are marked in brown.

Attributes

This is the list of attributes we intend to use. Most attributes can be used only with specific categories, and the categories tree below shows which attributes apply to which categories.

All of the attributes are optional: merchants don’t have to specify values for the attributes. However, we recommend specifying attribute values when appropriate to make it easier to find items in the market.

• Color: Black, Blue, Bronze, Brown, Gold, Grey, Green, Orange, Pink, Purple, Red, Silver, White, Yellow
• Movement: Static, Flexible, Animated, Interactive
• Department: Boys, Girls, Men, Women, Unisex
• Avatar Type: Animal, Anime, Fantasy, Furry, Human, Machine, Object, Plant, Weefolk
• Environment: Land, Sky, Space, Water
• Breedable: Yes, No
• Rideable: Yes, No
• Gesture: Yes, No
• Tattoo Style: Biker, Celtic, Erotic *, Funny, Gothic, Military, Tribal, Spiritual, Other
• Hair Type: Facial, Long, Body *, Short
• Hair Color: Black, Blonde, Blue, Brown, Grey, Green, Orange, Pink, Purple, Red, White
• Skin Color: Light, Tan, Dark, Other
• Clothing Style: BDSM *, Bridal, Business, Casual, Formal, Goth, Holiday, Maternity, Pirate, Uniform, Other
• Clothing Material: Cotton, Fur, Jeans, Latex, Leather, Silk, Suede, Synthetic, Wool, Other
• Building Material: Bone, Earth, Fabric, Feathers, Fire, Fur, Glass, Leather, Leaves, Liquid, Metal, Plastic, Scales, Stone, Wood, Other
• World Size: 1 Region, 2×2 Regions, 3×3 Regions, 4×4 Regions
• Sound Type: Ambient, Creature, Human, Machine, Nature, Object
• Theme: Arabian, Asian, Fantasy, Historical, Modern, Sci-Fi, Steampunk, Western, Other
• Art Theme: Abstract, Erotic *, Creatures, Landscape, People, Objects
• Furniture Use: Bathroom, Bedroom, Dining Room, Erotic *, Kitchen, Living Room, Nursery, Office, Outdoor, Rec Room
• Occasion: Birthday, Hanukkah, Christmas, Easter, Halloween, Independence Day (US), Kwanzaa, Mardi Gras, New Year’s Day, St Patrick’s Day, Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, Winterfest, Wedding

Categories

Our categories tree appears below. In each category, the first item indicates which attributes apply in that category. For example, items in the Clothing category support the following attributes: “[Color, Movement, Department, Clothing Style, Clothing Material, Theme, Occasion]“.

Attributes that appear in a category automatically apply to all of its subcategories as well. In addition, sometimes subcategories add attributes of their own. In that case, we use a “+” sign as a reminder that these attributes can be used in addition to the attributes in the parent category. For example, the Avatar Skins subcategory shows “[+ Skin Color]” in the first line. This means that the Avatar Skins category supports all the attributes of its parent category Avatar Appearance (“[Department, Avatar Type]“), and in addition it also supports the Skin Color attribute.

Avatar Appearance

• [Department, Avatar Type]
• Avatar Shapes
• Avatar Skins
  • [+ Skin Color]
• Cosmetic Enhancements
  • [+ Color]
  • Ears and Tails
  • Feet and Hooves
  • Genitalia *
  • Horns and Antlers
  • Face and Body Make-Up
  • Nail Polish
  • Wings
• Eyes
  • [+ Color]
• Hair
  • [+ Hair Color, Hair Type]
  • Hair Textures
• Tattoos
  • [+ Color, Tattoo Style]
• Avatar Component Bundles
  • [+ Color]
• Complete Avatars

Avatar Accessories

• [Color, Movement, Department, Theme, Occasion]
• Armors and Shields
• BDSM Accessories *
  • BDSM Collars *
  • BDSM Cuffs, Leashes and Restraints *
  • BDSM Whips, Crops and Paddles *
• Belts
• Canes, Staves and Wands
• Furry Accessories
• Glasses
• Hair Accessories
• HUD Attachments
• Handbags, Backpacks and Briefcases
• Hats, Gloves, and Scarves
• Jewelry and Watches
  • Anklets and Leg Jewelry
  • Belly Jewelry
  • Bracelets
  • Brooches
  • Crowns & Tiaras
  • Earrings
  • Jewelry Sets
  • Necklaces
  • Nose Rings and Piercing Jewelry
  • Rings
  • Watches
• Masks
• Neckties
• Other Avatar Accessories

Avatar Animations

• [Occasion, Gesture]
• Animation Bundles
• Animation Overrides
• Combat Animations
• Couples Animations
• Dancing Animations
• Emotive Animations
• Erotic Animations *
• Posing Animations
• Sitting and Lying Animations
• Walking and Running Animations
• Other Avatar Animations

Clothing

• [Color, Movement, Department, Clothing Style, Clothing Material, Theme, Occasion]
• Clothing Textures
• Clothing Bundles
• Dresses
• Footwear
  • Boots
  • Shoes
  • High Heels
  • Sandals and Flip-Flops
  • Slippers
  • Sneakers
  • Socks and Stockings
  • Other Footwear
• Jackets and Coats
• Outfits
  • Pants Outfits
  • Shorts Outfits
  • Skirt Outfits
• Pajamas and Underwear
  • Lingerie *
  • Lounge and Sleepwear
  • Underwear
• Pants
  • Capris
  • Long
  • Shorts
• Shirts
  • Blouses
  • Corsets
  • Halters
  • Long Sleeved
  • Short Sleeved
  • Sweaters
  • T-Shirts
  • Tanks and Camis
  • Tube Tops
• Sportswear
• Swimwear
• Skirts
• Vests

Creatures

• [Color, Movement, Environment, Breedable, Rideable]
• Amphibians
• Humans and Humanoids
  • Babies
• Birds
• Fantasy Creatures
• Insects
• Machines
• Marine Animals
• Mammals
• Reptiles
• Other Creatures

Creature Items

• [Color, Movement, Building Material, Theme, Occasion]
• Accessories and Toys
• Food and Energy Supplies
• Furniture
• Houses and Habitats
• Other Creature Items

Structures

• [Color, Movement, Building Material, Theme]
• Agricultural Buildings
• Commercial Buildings
• Educational Buildings
• Entertainment Buildings
• Government Buildings
• Industrial Buildings
• Landscaping Structures
• Military Buildings
• Parking and Storage
• Religious Buildings
• Residential Buildings
• Transit Stations
• Other Structures

Furniture

• [Color, Movement, Building Material, Theme, Furniture Use]
• Beds and Hammocks
• Bookcases and Shelves
• Chairs and Sofas
• Chests and Cabinets
• Tables

Interior Design

• [Color, Movement, Building Material, Theme, Occasion]
• Appliances
• Decor
  • Aquariums
  • Books and Periodicals
  • Clocks
  • Decorations
  • Dressing Screens
  • Cut Flowers and Potted Plants
  • Miniature Display Vehicles
    • Boats
    • Cars
    • Motorcycles
    • Planes
    • Trains
  • Mirrors
  • Pottery and Ceramics
• Electronics
  • Audio Systems
  • Computer Equipment
  • Televisions
• Entertainment
• Fireplaces
• Industrial Equipment
• Lab Equipment
• Lighting
  • Candles
  • Chandeliers
  • Lamps and Lanterns
  • Outdoor Lighting
  • Torches
• Office Equipment
• Rugs and Carpets
• Showers, Tubs, Pools and Saunas
• Window Treatments

Art

• [Color, Movement, Theme, Art Theme, Occasion]
• Drawings and Paintings
• Glass Art
• Graphics
• Greeting Cards
• Photos
• Picture Frames and Easels
  • [+ Building Material]
• Posters
• Sculptures and Statues
  • [+ Building Material]
• Tapestries
• Wall Art and Murals

Building Components

• Bridges and Walkways
  • [Color, Movement, Building Material, Theme]
• Building Aids
• Doors
  • [Color, Movement, Building Material, Theme]
• Fences and Railings
  • [Color, Movement, Building Material, Theme]
• Kits and Templates
  • [Color, Movement, Building Material, Theme, Occasion]
  • Architectural
  • Avatar Accessories
  • Avatar Apparel
  • Creatures
  • Food and Drink
  • Furniture
  • Hair
  • Landscaping
  • Plants and Trees
  • Shoes
  • Shop Decoration
  • Vehicles
  • Other Kits and Templates
• Signs
  • [Color, Movement, Building Material, Theme, Occasion]
• Stairs and Elevators
  • [Color, Movement, Building Material, Theme]
• Textures
  • [Color, Movement, Building Material, Occasion]
  • Animated Textures
  • Clothing Textures
  • Exterior Wall Textures
  • Fantasy Textures
  • Floor Textures
  • Ground Textures
  • Industrial and Urban Textures
  • Interior Wall Textures
  • Plant and Garden Textures
  • Stone Textures
  • Windows and Glass Textures
  • Other Textures
• Windows
  • [Color, Movement, Building Material, Theme]
• Other Building Components
  • [Color, Movement, Building Material, Theme, Occasion]

Recreation and Entertainment

• Adult Entertainment *
• Bars and Clubs
  • [Color, Movement, Building Material, Theme]
  • DJ Booths
  • Dance Floors
  • Tip Jars
  • Other Bars and Clubs Equipment
• Contraband *
  • [Movement]
• Event and Traffic Tools
• Food and Drink
  • [Color, Movement, Theme, Occasion]
• Games
  • [Occasion]
• Musical Instruments
  • [Color, Movement, Theme, Occasion]
• Sporting Goods
  • [Color, Movement, Theme]
  • Bicycle Equipment
  • Camping Equipment
  • Fishing Equipment
• Theme and Amusement Parks
  • [Movement, Building Material, Theme]
• Toys and Video Game Memorabilia
  • [Color, Movement, Building Material, Theme, Occasion]
• Other Fun Stuff
  • [Color, Movement, Building Material, Theme, Occasion]

Landscaping and Plants

• Caves, Grottos and Waterfalls
• Flowers and Plants
  • [Color, Movement]
• Trees and Shrubs
  • [Color, Movement]
• Underwater Landscaping
• Vegetable Gardens

Vehicles

• [Color, Movement, Building Material, Theme]
• Aircraft
  • Airplanes
  • Airships and Balloons
  • Helicopters
  • Hovercraft
• Ground Vehicles
  • Cars and Trucks
  • Heavy Machinery
  • Non-Motorized Vehicles
  • Military Ground Vehicles
  • Motorbikes
  • Other Ground Vehicles
• Multi-Use Vehicles
• Water Vehicles
  • Boats
    • Motor Boats
    • Row Boats
    • Sail Boats
  • Waterbikes
  • Submarines
• Space Vehicles
  • Rockets
  • Space Ships

Sound Effects

• [Theme, Sound Type, Occasion]

Gadgets

• Chat Enhancements
• Multi-Use Gadgets
• NPC Scripts
• Particle Effects
• Pose Stands
• Security
• Teleporters
• Other Gadgets

Weapons

• [Color, Movement, Building Material, Theme]
• Explosives
• Ranged Weapons
  • Bows
  • Cannons
  • Crossbows
  • Handguns
  • Rifles
  • Other Ranged Weapons
• Melee Weapons
  • Axes
  • Claws
  • Knives and Daggers
  • Pole Arms
  • Swords
  • Other Melee Weapons
• Other Weapons

Scripts

• Avatar Augmentation Scripts
• Building Helpers
• Business Scripts
• Communication Scripts
• Event Helpers
• Recreation and Entertainment Scripts
  • [Occasion]
• Scripting Tutorials
• Vehicle Scripts
• Weapon Scripts
• Other Scripts

Business Tools

• Affiliate Programs
• Advertising Systems
• Gift Cards and Vouchers
• Guides and Tutorials
• Information Management
• Rental Systems
• Retail Displays
• Vendor Machines

Worlds

(Note: this category will not be available when the market first opens. It will be added later.)

• [Color, Environment, World Size]
• Empty Terraformed Worlds
• Complete Worlds
  • [+ Theme]

We Need Your Feedback

What do you think about these categories and attributes? Please let us know in this thread in our forums.

Categories were updated on 12 Feb 2013 – Learn More

Categories were updated on 26 Feb 2013 – Learn More

Categories were updated on 19 Nov 2020 – Learn More

We rolled out a few more quick updates to follow up yesterday’s large system update.

Better Detection of Idle Users

Due to user requests, we improved our idle user detection system. First, users that are using private IM to chat are now considered active (previously we only checked for public chat). Second, users that are busy scripting are also considered active. (To be precise, we check for the event where a script is saved.)

Canceled the User Referral Bonus

We’ve canceled the user referral bonus. This was a bonus of 200 Minutes that was given to users who brought other users to Kitely. However, we’ve heard from our users that this bonus is of little use and that it can cause frustration so we decided to simplify things by eliminating it. Now bringing your friends over to Kitely is its own reward 🙂