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Creating an account

To create a new Launchpad account, visit the [https://launchpad.net/+login account sign-up] page. All you need is an email address that Launchpad can use to contact you.

A few things to note:

• Confirmation email: If you don't receive a confirmation email from Launchpad it may have been incorrectly trapped by a spam filter. If you think this has happened, try registering using a [http://mail.google.com/ Gmail] or [http://mail.yahoo.com/ Yahoo! Mail] address. You can always change your registered email address later on. If that still doesn't work, [:Feedback:let us know].

• Display name: Launchpad will ask you for a display name. This is the name people will see on your profile page and next to work that you do. Many people choose to use their real name or a widely recognised pseudonym here.

• Protecting your email address: Your email address is only visible to registered Launchpad users and not search engine spiders or spam bots. However, you can hide it from everyone at any time.

Once you've created your account, it's time to tell other Launchpad users a bit about yourself.

Personalising your profile

When you first create your account, your profile looks pretty bare. You can add information about yourself straight away. Once you start to use Launchpad, your profile will also automatically tell people about the sort of work you do in Launchpad.

You can personalise your profile in a few different ways:

• [https://launchpad.net/people/+me/+edithomepage add a personal message] to your profile

• [https://launchpad.net/people/+me/+editemails register additional email addresses]

• [https://launchpad.net/people/+me/+editwikipages link to your project wiki pages]

• publish your [https://launchpad.net/people/+me/+editircnicknames IRC nicks] and [https://launchpad.net/people/+me/+editjabberids Jabber identities]

• tell Launchpad [https://launchpad.net/people/+me/+edit your timezone].

Your Launchpad name

You've already chosen your display name - i.e. the name other people will see next to work you do - but Launchpad has also automatically generated a system username for you.

Launchpad refers to this as your name and it's mostly used in URLs. If you're an Ubuntu member, it also forms part of your Ubuntu.com email address in the format name@ubuntu.com.

For example: Matthew Revell works on the Launchpad team. His display name is Matthew Revell but his Launchpad name is matthew.revell. His Launchpad home page is https://launchpad.net/~matthew.revell and his Ubuntu email address is matthew.revell@ubuntu.com

If you're unhappy with your automatically generated Launchpad name, now's a good time to [https://launchpad.net/people/+me/+edit change it]. Changing it once you've started using Launchpad in full may be awkward as it will also change the URLs of some of your work.

Next step

Now that you've got your Launchpad account set up, let's look at how you can help others to visually identify the work you do.

Read on for more about [:YourAccount/Branding:branding your Launchpad account].