Here's how YOU can participate on Daily Kos!
We welcome you to sign up for a free Community User account here at Daily Kos. Our video tutorial on the sign up process is linked below.
If you are ready to sign up for a user account right now, you can click on the Sign up button at the top of any desktop page and follow the prompts, or use this
direct signup link
. Note that the username you choose at signup WILL BE DISPLAYED on all your posts and comments, so please consider it carefully.
A special note for non-US residents:
The signup portal requests a zip code to complete the process. The "US only" note means that the form will accept only a 5-digit zip code. Someone living outside the US is welcome to use any five digit number, either a zip code for a particular area or address in the US or a throwaway one like 99999.
A special note on passwords:
Our two requirements for passwords are explained in detail in this post from July 2019.
1. Passwords must be at least 8 characters long.
2. Passwords must NOT be on this regularly-updated list of "the most commonly used passwords.”
If your password does not meet these two requirements, it will be rejected. Please consult the linked resource, "Password Creation Advice," for more guidance about creating a secure and easily-remembered password.
One more detail to note: A new user account must be confirmed via a link delivered to the email used at signup. If you do not receive any follow-up emails after you create your account, please open a Help Desk ticket. Some users encounter a glitch with that delivery, and we will have to get you set up manually if you are among that group.
If you're ready to sign up right now, you have all the information you need. We look forward to seeing you on the site!
If you'd like to know a little more background and context about the importance of Community participation, however, please read on for these finer details.
Paid staff writers create only a part of our site content. The rest is created by Community members, and as soon as you sign up and confirm your account, you can begin to contribute to the site yourself.
Some of our most widely-read posts are by Community writers with a compelling personal story to tell, or deep knowledge about local politics to share. Community writers enrich the scope and variety of topics we can cover beyond the range of our staff writers, who bring their special expertise to bear on major political issues and developments.
Having a Community User account permits you to join the conversation, whether by writing your own blog posts and comments or by replying to the blog posts and comments of other Community members and Staff writers. It also allows you to recommend comments and stories. Your Community status will be indicated by the caption "Community" under your byline for a post, and your user profile will show up in blue rather than the orange reserved for Daily Kos Staff members.
As a member of Daily Kos, you belong to the largest online progressive community in the nation. We are both a news organization and an activist hub. Your comments and stories will be visible to thousands of site readers who visit Daily Kos every day. Thus, you can contribute in a meaningful way to one of the most flexible and feature-rich websites still open to community participation, and be a part of advancing the causes we champion.
Again, before you sign up, please keep this caution in mind:
Choose your username with care.
Your username will appear on every post and comment, and in association with every comment and story you recommend. We permit people to post in complete anonymity or to post under their own real names -- but we do NOT permit people to change their usernames once they've created a posting account here (except in unusual and rare cases). So please take a moment to consider how you'd like to be known around the site before you register.
After you sign up and login, the site will look a little different to you in a number of places. Perhaps the most obvious differences are shown on the top bar of the Front Page/home page. Instead of links asking you to sign up or login, it will show your avatar (desktop and mobile browsers) and a Write a Story link (on desktop browsers). Your avatar in the upper right corner (a round image that can be customized) has a pulldown menu associated with it to give you access to a number of other pages associated with your user account.
Stories will look different too. You will be able to Recommend stories that you find worthy of your endorsement, by clicking the star associated with it. And the comment threads attached to recent stories will permit you to participate. At the top and the bottom of each story you will see a comment box, ready for any text, photo and (almost any) embed you want to supply in response to the story. You will also see a reply button attached to every comment except for the Tip Jar, so that you can respond to comments other people have made. Recent comments will also accept recommendations, a standard way of indicating your support of what the comment's author wrote.
There are even finer details to know about posting and commenting, but you will pick up a lot as you go along. In case you want more information, you are welcome to make use of any of the other resources we offer to long-time and first-time members alike. You may find it helpful to take a look at some of the tutorials linked below.
It is also worthwhile to read
the site's Rules of the Road to get a sense of site expectations, explained in a short list of dos and don'ts.
Some new users decide to take their time getting acclimated, reading and commenting in Open Threads and other posts for an indefinite period before writing and publishing a story. Others decide to jump right in by posting their own stories on their first day. Either approach can work beautifully.
Thank you for your support of the mission of Daily Kos! We look forward to having you join the conversation here at the nation's largest progressive community for news, opinion, and election strategy and analysis.
Why not create your account today?