If you have followed our lessons up until now, you should have an idea of what Reddit is, how it works, and what it should or shouldn't be used for. Now, if you're ready to join the community of Redditors (as users of Reddit are called), then you will need to create an account. This lesson will show you how to go about doing so.
To sign up for Reddit:
1. Go to www.reddit.com and click "Log In or Sign Up".
You will find the "Log In or Sign Up" button in the upper-right corner of the home page of Reddit, just above the search box.
2. Input a user name, your email address, and a password, and then pass the security check.
You should now see a pop-up box on the screen; focus on the left side of it, as it contains what you will need to start a new Reddit account.
Click in the boxes highlighted in the screenshot above and type in:
- a user name to represent yourself with on Reddit
- a password to protect your account
- a copy of the password that you just picked
- your email address
(NOTE: The user name box will display a checkmark or an "X" beside it based on whether or not the user name that you have chosen is currently available. If you have chosen a user name that is not currently available, try a different one — or slight variations of your current one — until you find a user name that is not in use.)
Once you have entered this information, click the box labelled "I'm Not a Robot" to pass the security check and let Reddit know that you're not a computer program trying to mass-create fake accounts. Then click Sign Up.
3. Verify your email address for Reddit, so you can reset your account password if needed.
There is one last thing that you should do when setting up a new account, and that is verify your email address for Reddit. This allows Reddit to know where to send an account recovery email if you forget the password to your account.
Go to your email provider, log in, and find the email from Reddit.com titled "Reddit: Verify Your Email Address". Click on it to open it, and then click the blue hyperlink inside the email (blurred out here for security purposes) to verify your email address.
That's it! You're all ready to start contributing to Reddit! We'll go over how to do that in our next tutorial for how to post on Reddit!
