An account is created quickly, which is exactly why a few settings often stay untouched. That comes back later: responses land in spam, your submissions carry a name you would not have chosen, and the interface appears in a language you did not want to work in. Five minutes at the start save you all of it.
Your profile is your calling card
The name in your profile travels with every submission. Channel operators see it when they review an offer, and they refer to it when they follow up. A clear name helps both sides; a cryptic abbreviation does not.
Check your email address as well. It is the channel through which every response reaches you. If you use a catch-all address you rarely open, you will miss deadlines without noticing.
Notifications that arrive
The platform sends messages when something changes about one of your submissions. To make sure they arrive, look in your spam folder after the first email. Move it to your inbox once and mark the sender as trusted. After that it settles down.
Note
Messages about your account and about running offers are part of operating the platform. They cannot be unsubscribed from, because you would otherwise miss deadlines.
Setting your language
The interface is available in German and English. Your choice affects menus, hints and the language of notifications. Content other people entered, such as channel descriptions, stays in the language it was written in.
The same applies to the blog: articles available in both languages take you straight to the other version when you switch. Where no translation exists yet, you land on the overview in the language you chose.
Securing access
Pick a password you use nowhere else. A password manager takes care of remembering it and makes long passwords practical. Check as well whether an old address from an earlier registration is still stored in your account details.
If you work on a shared computer, sign out after uploading. Your submissions and their responses are tied to your account, and anyone looking into it also sees which channels received your material.
Then the actual work begins
Once the account is set up, the rest is routine. How a first upload works is covered in the article on your first upload. If you run a channel and want to receive submissions, you request that role from inside your account; the article for channel operators describes what follows.
What you can change later
Almost everything. Name, address and language can be adjusted at any time without touching existing submissions. If you change your display name, it applies to future offers; those already running keep the state they had when you sent them.
The email address is different. It doubles as your login, and a change has to be confirmed. Do not plan that for a moment when you are watching a deadline, but for a quiet one.
If you do not use your account for a while, it stays as it is. Your submissions and their history belong to your account rather than to a single session.
