Creating your account and signing in

An account is free and takes about a minute. You need an email address you can open and a password you have not used anywhere else.

Registering

1. Open the sign-up page.
2. Enter your email address and choose a password.
3. Submit the form. You are signed in from that moment.

Signing in afterwards

Use the My Account link in the bar at the top of every page, or go straight to /my-account/ — /login/ lands you in the same place. That one page is your whole account area: orders, details, password, and the security settings covered in the next guide.

There is no separate admin area for members and you never need one. Everything you do here happens on the front of the site, on pages that look like the rest of it.

What a free account gets you

A free account is a real account rather than a trial that runs out. It gets you the shop, the public finance writing, the arcade and ordinary support. What it does not get you is loyalty points, the member discount or early access to new stock — those come with a paid tier, and the next guide but one lays out what each tier costs and unlocks.

Next: locking your account down.