Registration

Registering creates a member account: a username, a password, an email address the hub can reach you at, and whatever else your hub asks for. Once the account is confirmed you can contribute content, join groups, and run tools.

Read this page if the form asked you something you did not expect, or if you registered and the account still will not work. If the form is short and obvious on your hub, fill it in and go to Getting started instead.

The form is longer than a sign-up form usually is, and for a reason. A hub is a place where work is attributed: your name goes on the datasets you release, the questions you answer, and the tool sessions the hub bills to a quota. The extra questions — organisation, discipline, position — are what let a group manager recognise the right person before letting them at the group's files.

No two hubs ask exactly the same questions. The fieldsets below are the ones built into the software; the Personal Information fieldset in the middle is entirely the hub's own, and any of the standard fields can be made required, optional, read-only, or hidden. Administrators set that up on the Users > Members > Registration screen, described in the Registration chapter of the Hub managers book.

Creating an account

1. Go to the hub's front page and select Register, or go straight to https://yourhub.org/register. The login form also carries a Create an account link, which goes to the same place.

2. If the hub accepts logins from other services — Google, ORCID, Globus, Shibboleth and others are all possible — a Connect With panel appears at the top of the form. Using one fills in part of the form for you and links that account to your new hub account.

   Signing in this way does not skip the rest of the form. It saves typing and gives you one fewer password to keep; see Third-party logins below for what it leaves unfinished.

3. Under Login Information, type a Username. The hint under the box says what is allowed: Combination of lowercase letters and numbers. No spaces or punctuation. When you leave the box, the hub checks the name against the accounts that already exist and reports underneath whether it is available. You do not have to submit the form to find out.

   Choose one you would not mind a co-author seeing. On hubs that offer SSH or SFTP access for tool development, the same username is your login there; the Account tab shows it as your local services username.

4. Type a Password, then repeat it in Confirm Password. The list of rules under the boxes is your hub's own — it is a table an administrator edits, so its length and content vary. The list updates as you type, marking each rule as it is satisfied. Work down the list until nothing is left flagged; the form rejects the password otherwise, and it will tell you which rule failed.

5. Under Contact Information, fill in First Name, Middle Name, and Last Name. Middle name is never required.

   This is the name that appears on anything you contribute, so type it as you would want it cited.

6. Type your address in Valid E-mail and again in Confirm E-mail. A warning under the boxes names the address the confirmation message will come from.

   

   If the address already belongs to an account, the form says so and offers two buttons instead: one that emails you the existing account's details, and one that opens a support ticket asking for that account's resource limits to be raised. That second button is there because the usual reason to register twice is running out of disk or session quota, and a second account is not the fix.

7. Answer the questions in Personal Information. These are your hub's own fields — organisation, discipline, position, and so on. Fields marked required have to be answered; the rest can be left blank and filled in later from your profile. Some fields reveal further questions depending on the answer you give.

8. Under Receive Email Updates, tick or clear the box beside Would you like to receive email updates (newsletters, etc.)? It is ticked by default. It governs newsletters only — it does not stop the confirmation message, or the notifications a group or project sends you.

9. Complete the Human Check. Its contents depend on which CAPTCHA plugin the hub runs: an image of distorted characters to retype (with a Letters not clear? Refresh CAPTCHA. link), an arithmetic question, or Google reCAPTCHA.

10. Under Terms & Conditions, open the Terms of Use link, read it, and tick Yes, I have read and agree to the Terms of Use.

11. Select Create Account.

What happens next

In order, and depending on how the hub is set up:

1. The account is created and the form is replaced by Account Created!, with a four-step reminder — find the email, follow the activation link, log in, done — and the address the message went to.
2. If email confirmation is on, which is the usual setting, the account cannot be used until you follow the link. This is the step most people are stuck at when they say the hub is not letting them in.
3. If the hub also requires administrator approval, confirming the address is not the end. Until someone approves the account, logging in reaches a page headed Pending Approval. Where the hub has the approval notice switched on, it emails you when the account is approved. Nothing you can do speeds it up; the page carries a link to raise a support ticket if you think it is wrong.
4. If the hub has switched confirmation off, the account works as soon as it is created and you can log in immediately.

Activating the account

Follow the link in the message and log in. That confirms the address and, on a hub that does not also require administrator approval, the account is ready.

If nothing arrives:

• The message is generated automatically and some filters treat it as spam. Check the spam folder first.
• Log in anyway. An unconfirmed account reaches a page headed Email Address Unconfirmed, which offers to send a new confirmation message to the address on the account. Failing that, contact the hub's support.
• If you mistyped the address, correct it from your profile. Changing an email address un-confirms the account and sends a fresh confirmation link, so you will have to confirm again.

Third-party logins

An account created by logging in through another service starts out incomplete: the hub does not get a usable email address from every provider, so it holds you on the registration form until you supply the missing pieces. Until you do, you cannot be messaged by other members and the account shows as incomplete.

You can link further services to an existing account, and set a local password, from the Account tab of your member area. A local password is worth setting even if you always sign in through a provider: SSH, SFTP, and tool development access use it, and a linked account cannot be removed if it is the only way you can get in.