User blog:Trellar/Updates to Log In and Sign Up



We've made some new changes to our Log in and Sign up process and we wanted to share them with you!

You'll now see a redesigned look and flow for both Log in and Sign up features on all English wikis. We've made these changes for a few reasons, but mainly because we felt the features were not as smooth or streamlined as they could be, nor did they fit with our site's overall look and feel.

Let's walk through what we've changed:

Log in
Log in will now appear as a link in the global nav as a drop down module. This will make logging in quicker, easier and with less clutter. It's a single action, making it less obtrusive and keeping you on the original page you logged into. It also syncs up with the site's overall design and feel.

Sign up


Like Log in, we've made the Sign up process more efficient. We've reduced the extra fields making signing up as short and easy as possible. We felt it was important to convey which wiki one is signing up for, so new users will see the specific wiki's colors and wordmark (along with a few avatars!) incorporated and prominent on the new sign up page.

Email Confirmation

With these changes comes confirmed email sign up for all new users. This means that new users will need to click a confirmation link in an email before their account is fully created.

Will this affect you? Not if you already have an account. However, if you change your email going forward, you will indeed have to confirm your email address.

We believe registered emails help us help you. If you forget your password, we can email you. If someone edits a page you are watching, you'll get an email if you're interested in it. Emails help you to see what is going on within your community. It also makes sure you get this info outside of Wikia reliably. Granted, you'll only receive these emails if your email preferences are set for email notification.

Facebook Connect

We've also made Facebook Connect the most efficient and easiest way to sign up. Because Facebook already requires you to confirm your email address for their site, that's one less step you'll have to do on Wikia.

Have questions about what this all means? Let us know in the comments.