So I ended up buying third, fourth and fifth houses. They were all in lower traffic areas, although still easy on the eyes. I figure that I'll see which ones people seemed to gravitate to, and auction off the other ones.

Next I had to consider the interior décor and buy furniture (this was my favorite part!). Should the décor be cozy? Should it be soothing? I created a modern decor, but decided that it looked like a doctor's waiting room and ended up going instead with both Japanese and Moroccan layouts.

We have an offshoot of the main text-based chat room called the Quiet Room where people in crisis can have a more private conversation with one or two members. I wondered if I should screen off one part of the room for this purpose. But couldn't members just use private messages for that? I finally decided on a compromise. The Japanese décor had a screen that I really liked, and the Moroccan didn't, so I screened off a part of the room only in the Japanese decor.

(You might be wondering how I can talk about this world and being in it, as though it were real. It probably seems somewhat silly. The reason I do is because otherwise I would have to put quotation marks around half of the words I use and that itself would seem silly after a while.)

I knew that I needed to increase the members' comfort level with this world. Most of them would be using a virtual online world for the first time. One thing that was absolutely essential was a guide to the virtual world, which I posted on the forum. I included in it getting around and communicating in There.com in general, specific instructions on how to get to the houses we owned (with maps), and information on what areas would be private from non-members. Given that the members would be talking about depression and related issues, it was obviously essential to have complete privacy when needed.

As people started logging on and spending time in our virtual chat room, I ran into a lot of issues that I never had to consider in a text based chat room:

• In text based chat, personal space is essentially never an issue, any more than it is when you send an email. In a virtual world, however, you are dealing with the issue of personal space as much as you do in the real world. If there are three couches and two are empty, do you sit on an empty one or on the couch occupied by someone you're chatting with?

• One of our regular male chatters was constantly coming on to female members in the text-based chat, despite guidelines against it. We finally had impressed on him that this wasn't acceptable. For some reason, however, he didn't think that the same guidelines applied to There.com. There he would have his avatar stand very close to those of the female members, kiss them or sit on their laps. If his flirting made women uncomfortable in text-based chat, it made them doubly uncomfortable when he could invade their space and made his virtual passes more "real."

• I had to consider whether to put out “drinks” in the houses. Little touches like that help you suspend your belief, but would it be difficult for people who have addictions? Taking things like this into consideration (it's not a real drink, after all) may seem silly, but my goal is to provide a safe environment in which to talk. I decided to put out virtual sodas and coffee only.

• I was in a quandary over whether I should provide dune buggies and hoverboards for people to play with. It might help them unwind and bond, but it also might distract from talking about depression, and after all, you can't discuss your depression just anywhere. Doesn't it make sense to stay on topic here? I'm not completely decided on this question one way or another, but I think I'm leaning toward providing them.

• I also had to decide whether to play music or not (adds to the ambiance or irritating) and at least for now, I am just playing it "outside."

Phew. I really didn't anticipate all these new issues cropping up when I began this venture, although I should have. Every new medium that we communicate in brings with it different issues, because people are interacting differently. Now that I've hammered out solutions to the most obvious ones, I'm off to sit on my virtual beach with a virtual drink in my hand.