Getting started: a guide for new members
Welcome aboard. This guide walks you through the first few steps, in the order we would do them ourselves. It takes about ten minutes end to end, and you can stop and come back at any point — nothing is lost.
Before you begin
There are only two things worth having to hand: an email address you actually check, and a photo you are happy for other people to see. Everything else can be filled in later.
Step by step
- Create your account. Use an email address you check regularly — this is where notifications go.
- Confirm your address. The confirmation link expires, so do this one first if you do nothing else.
- Add a photo. Accounts with a photo get noticeably more engagement than accounts without.
- Write a short description. Two or three sentences is plenty to begin with.
- Check your notification settings. Decide now what you want to hear about, rather than muting everything later.
Getting the details right
A few small things make a disproportionate difference:
- Use your real name or a name people will recognise — it builds trust faster than anything else on the page.
- Keep your description specific. Specific beats impressive every time.
- Fill in every field you reasonably can. Sparse pages read as abandoned.
- Come back and update it. A page last touched a year ago tells its own story.
If something goes wrong
The most common problem by far is a confirmation email that has not arrived. Check your spam folder first — that is where it is, nine times out of ten. If it genuinely is not there, you can request a new one from your account page.
You do not have to get this perfect on day one. The people who get the most out of this place are the ones who come back and tidy things up as they go.
What to do next
Once you are set up, have a look around before adding anything of your own. Seeing how other people have put their pages together is the fastest way to work out what good looks like here — and what you would rather do differently.