Every comment you leave, every vote you cast, every wave you post turns your username into a link. People click it. What they find in the next three seconds decides whether you gain a follower or a back button. That makes your profile the highest-traffic landing page you never think about and on Ecency it takes about ten minutes to set up properly.
Here is the whole checklist, with the reason behind each item and exactly where it shows up. Everything lives at ecency.com/@yourname/settings once you are signed in.
Your avatar is not a profile decoration. It rides along on every post in every feed, every comment you write, every wave and the hover preview that appears when someone points at your name. It is also the image that shows when your profile link gets shared elsewhere. In other words, it appears in a hundred places your profile page never will.
Pick something recognizable at small sizes: a face, a logo, a simple mark. You can paste an image URL or hit the upload button right in the form and Ecency's free image hosting takes care of the rest. If you skip everything else on this list, do not skip this one. An account with a default avatar reads as an account nobody is home at.
The cover is the wide image across the top of your profile page and it also appears in the preview card when people hover over your name on web. It is your one purely atmospheric slot: your workspace, your art, your landscape, your brand colors. A blank cover is not a disaster, but a good one makes the page feel like a destination instead of a form that someone half-filled.
Usernames on Hive are lowercase and permanent. Your display name is neither and you get up to 30 characters of it. It shows next to your avatar across the app and on ecency.com it leads the page title that search engines and link previews use for your profile. "Maria Chen" or "Pixel Garden Studio" travels better than a bare username, so put your actual name or your project's name here.
The bio field is short on purpose. Those 160 characters show on your profile card and in the hover preview and here is the part most people miss: on ecency.com your bio also becomes the description that search engines and social link previews display for your profile page, word for word. One sentence you type into a settings form ends up being your pitch in search results.
So write it like a pitch, not a shrug. Say what you write about and who it is for. "Weekly deep dives on fermentation, from a home kitchen in Lisbon" beats "just vibing" in every context that field will ever appear in.
Thirty characters, shown on your profile card and in the hover preview. It does not need to be precise and for privacy it probably should not be. "Lisbon", "Pacific Northwest", or "somewhere on a sailboat" all do the job, which is to make the account feel like a person somewhere real. Fill it in at whatever resolution you are comfortable with.
The website field appears on your profile card and when it is a valid URL it becomes a clickable link. Point it at the thing you most want visitors to find next: your own domain, your portfolio, your shop, your other project. If you have nothing external yet, leave it empty rather than pointing it somewhere stale. A dead link says more than no link.
On the web app, pointing at any username pops up a compact preview: cover, avatar, display name, bio, location, follower counts and a few stats. That means your profile is being pitched constantly, to readers who never visit the page itself, in threads you commented on weeks ago. Five of the six fields above ride in that card, everything except your website link. Ten minutes of setup keeps working for you in every conversation you have ever joined.
One more reason this is worth doing right: your profile is not stored in Ecency's database. It is written to your Hive account's metadata on-chain, so the same avatar, bio and links show up in any Hive app that reads your account. Saving changes is a signed operation like any other and every signer works: Keychain, HiveSigner, Ecency Keeper, MetaMask with the Hive snap, or your posting key. Set it once and it is yours across the whole ecosystem, the same way your posts are. If that idea is new to you, the post "Own Your Content: Why It Matters in 2026" covers why it matters.
Upload an avatar that reads at small sizes.
Add a cover image that sets your tone.
Set a display name people can actually say.
Write a 160-character bio that pitches your work.
Add a location at a resolution you are comfortable with.
Link a website only if it is alive and current.
Then hover over your own username and look at the card the way a stranger would. That card is your handshake. Make it a good one at ecency.com.
