Joining and signing in

How visitors create an account in a community, confirm their email, answer join questions, wait for approval or buy access, and sign in again.

This page walks through a community's front door as a visitor sees it: creating an account, getting in, and signing in again later. Use it to know what your members will meet, or to help someone who's stuck at sign-up. What a visitor meets depends on the community's Visibility and approval settings — admins set those in General settings.

Open the community's address in a browser. A visitor who isn't signed in sees Join Group and Login in the top bar (on a phone, one Join / Login button).

Creating an account

1. Select Join Group. Create your account opens.
2. Enter First Name, Last Name, Email, Password and Please Confirm Password. If the community asks for a phone number, Phone Number appears too — required or optional, in international format with the country code.
3. Select Create New Account. Doing so accepts the community's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, linked under the button.
4. We sent you a code — enter the code from the email in Verification Code and select Verify. No email? Check the spam folder, then select Resend code under "Didn't get the email?".

If the email already has an account in this community, the form says "This email address is already registered. Please try logging in, or reset your password if needed." — select Login instead, or reset the password.

Once the email is confirmed, what happens next depends on the community.

Getting in

Community	What the new member sees
Public	They're in straight away.
Private, with approval	The join questions, if the community has them, then Request Sent! — "Your request is under review." They get an email when they're approved.
Private, auto-approved	They're in straight away.
Paid	A checkout for the product that gives access: the Payment Summary, payment details and Buy. Once the payment goes through, they're in.

Join questions open as "Please answer questions to join this group" — a text answer or one choice per question. The answers go to the admins with the request.

Someone who is signed in but isn't a member yet sees Join Group — "To engage, like, post, and comment in this community!" — and selects JOIN GROUP, or, in a Paid community, the checkout. The same approval rules apply.

Approving and declining requests is covered in Members & join requests.

Finishing your profile

Once a new member is in and has no profile photo, Let's Finish Your Profile Now! opens: a photo (upload one, or Take a photo with the camera), the first name and a short bio. Select Complete, or Skip for now.

The photo is optional. After Skip for now, the window doesn't open by itself again for a week; until a photo is added, a dot on the avatar and Add profile photo in the avatar menu bring it back. Everything here can be changed later in Profile Settings.

Signing in

1. Select Login. Welcome back opens.
2. Enter your Email and Password, and select Login.

If the community uses two-factor authentication, you're then asked for a code — see Your account in a community. If you're asked to set a new password ("Your Password is Expired"), enter a New Password and select Update Password.

Forgot your password

1. On Welcome back, select Forgot Password?.
2. Enter the email you use in this community and select Reset Password.
3. Open the link in the email and set a new password. The link works for 60 minutes.

If your password isn't accepted, keep in mind that a community may have its own password, different from your ESTAGE account's. Reset it under the error message starts the same reset.

Things worth knowing

• Your profile is per community. Joining a second community gives you a separate profile there — see Your account in a community.
• After several wrong attempts you have to wait before trying again, or reset your password.

Related: Community general settings