Help:Logging in

Help:Logging in

Logging in

Creating a user account means that you supply a username (your real name or a nickname) and a password. The system will reject a username that is already in use. A user account is created only once. You are then "logged in". Next time you log in you supply your username again and demonstrate with the password that you are the same person.

Edits you make are recorded under your username. If you are not logged in your edits are recorded under your IP address.

You can see your IP address, if you are not logged in, by going to the page history.

How to log in

First, make sure that your browser accepts cookies. Some browsers can accept or reject cookies from individual sites; users of these should configure the browser to accept cookies from each wiki you plan to edit, such as wikipedia.org.

Click on the Log in link at the top right of the page. You will then be prompted to enter your username and password. If you have not logged in before, you will need to use the link provided to create an account.

You may give your email address if you like. Other users will be able to send email to the address, but they won't be able to find out what the address is.

If you click the box Remember me, you will not have to give your password again when you access MediaWiki wiki from the same computer. This feature will only work if your password was not generated by the Mediawiki software. So change your password please. Please note that the cookies containing username and password automatically expire 30 days after login (unless you log out manually).

Logging in and setting preferences are done separately on each wiki (for plans of changing this see m:Single login). You may like to maintain a cross-wiki identity by using the same username on each wiki that you use, if that name is still free.

Creating an account

To create an account, select Log in (top right of page) then create an account. You will need to provide a username and password as well as answer a visual 'captcha' (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart). This is a very simple visual test to make sure you are a human! Users with text, speech, or legacy browsers will be unable to create an account if they cannot view this image. If you are unable to view captchas, you can request for an account to be created for you at Wikipedia:Request an account.

You may also be unable to create an account if it contains certain symbols (particularly the '@' symbol as well as certain non-Latin characters) or words, or if it is too similar to that of an existing user. In that case, you will also have to request an account.