Quick Start Guides for Signing Up and Participating on Daily Kos
This article serves as an index to resources explaining how to get started at Daily Kos. Topics covered include creating a user account, participating on the site, and understanding community moderation.
Sign Up
Click the sign-up link and follow the prompts. Please be aware before you choose your username that it will be publicly visible on your user profile page, and it will be associated with every comment and post you create and every recommend you offer to someone else's comment or post.
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 US area or address or a throwaway one like 99999.
After you choose your username and password, the system will generate a confirmation email to the address you supplied. If you do not receive that confirmation email and activate your account, you will not be able to login. Feel free to open a ticket at the Help Desk for assistance once you have determined that our confirmation email was not misdirected to your spam folder.
This written guide, "Here's how YOU can participate at Daily Kos," provides extensive background.
This video, "Daily Kos Tutorial: How to sign up for a free account on Daily Kos," also briefly explains the key steps for creating your account.
Recommending Comments and Stories
"DK BASICS: TIPPED, RECCED AND SHARED" by Daily Kos staff member TrueBlueMajority explains the processes listed in the title. She describes why recommending posts and comments matters, how to do so, and how to share stories on social media.
See also the video, "Daily Kos Tutorial: How to recommend, share, or comment on a story," for all you need to know to start to participate on the site.
Writing a Story (also called a Post, Article, or Diary)
The draft windows for stories and comments are intended to be self-explanatory, but some aspects might not be obvious to everyone. For some tips, please see the following guides.
This written tutorial, "How to Write a Daily Kos Story: The Basics," is the shortest and most efficient text-based guide. If you prefer to consult a video, please follow this link to "Daily Kos Tutorial: Writing a story on Daily Kos."
Additional details about the use of the Image Library and Tags are provided in the tutorials on each topic linked below.
Daily Kos Community Moderation
The Daily Kos community relies upon a unique system of moderation to help make this a welcoming and constructive forum for all who support our mission. The system and related guidelines are explained in the site's Rules of the Road, which provides a concise reference for new and experienced site users regarding the DOs and DO NOTs at Daily Kos.