There are two ways to sign up on a Mastodon server: registrations and invitations. If you’re the admin of a Mastodon server, here is how to adjust both of these methods:
Adjusting your server’s registration settings
- Log into your server’s website with the admin account
- Click ⚙️ Preferences (if you’re on the mobile website click ☰ in bottom right and then ⚙️ Preferences)
- Click Administration and then Server Settings on the left of the screen (if you’re on the mobile website click ☰ in top right and then select Administration and then Server Settings)
- Click Registrations tab
- In the “Who can sign up” section choose the setting you want. “Nobody” means registrations are closed, “Approval required” means anyone can sign up but you need to manually approve their account before it works, “Anyone” means anyone can sign up and their account will work straight away.
- If you selected “Approval required” in previous step, you can optionally tick the box marked “Require a reason to join” if you want people to give a reason when they sign up
- Adjust any other registration settings you want
- Click “Save Changes”
⚠️ BE REALLY CAREFUL IF YOU OPEN FOR PUBLIC SIGN-UPS. Running a public server can be a very big undertaking with many challenges, and it is a lot easier to run a closed server. See Step 1 in the “10 steps” guide ⧉ for more info about this.
Adjusting your server’s invitations and invitation settings
Invitations to Mastodon servers work even if the server’s registrations are closed. They are special links which open a sign-up form, and can optionally be restricted by how long they work and how many sign-ups they allow.
If you’re the server admin you can always generate invitations, and you can also optionally allow your server’s members and staff to generate invitations too.
To generate an invitation or cancel other people’s invitations:
- Log into your server website with the admin account
- Click ⚙️ Preferences (if you’re on the mobile website click ☰ in bottom right and then ⚙️ Preferences)
- Click Moderation and then Invites on the left of the screen (if you’re on the mobile website click ☰ in top right and then select Moderation and then Invites)
- If you’re wanting to generate your own invitation, select the settings you want and then click “Generate invite link”, you can then share the link with whoever you want
- If you’re wanting to cancel other invitations, click “Deactivate” next to the invitation you want to cancel
To adjust who can create invitations:
- Log into your server website with the admin account
- Click ⚙️ Preferences (if you’re on the mobile website click ☰ in bottom right and then ⚙️ Preferences)
- Click Administration and then Roles on the left of the screen (if you’re on the mobile website click ☰ in top right and then select Administration and then Roles)
- Click “Edit” next to the type of user whose invitation powers you want to adjust. If you want to adjust this for ordinary users on your server, click edit next to “Default Permissions”.
- Tick or un-tick the box marked “Invite users” depending on whether you want to allow them to generate invitations
- Click “Save changes”
Choose your server’s sign-up policy
You can adjust the settings on registrations and invitations to provide the best sign-up policy for your server. Here’s a list going roughly from the most restricted sign-up policy to least restricted:
- Registrations off and invitations off
- Registrations off, invitations generated by users allowed
- Registrations allowed but approval and reason required, invitations allowed
- Registrations allowed but approval required, invitations allowed
- Registrations allowed, invitations allowed
You could also have registrations on and invitations off, but there’s no obvious reason to do this.
How do admins decide whether to approve a registration?
Part of the reason for requiring approval is because spammers and trolls tend to avoid such servers completely. So, simply by requiring approval you will be keeping a lot of nasty people away.
If you require a reason to join, this may help you in deciding whether to approve a sign-up.
If you want to go into more technical detail with your sign-up screening, the moderation organisation IFTAS has a guide to resources related to IP addresses and email providers ⧉.