There has been some confusion on the steps necessary to join the new community, and some of the default instructions are not as clear as they could be, so FOLLOW THESE STEPS and you will get a working account.

1. If you have not gotten an invitation, request one. Refer back to past CCB emails to see an invitation link, or Contact Us in one of the following ways with your email address so we can send you a personalized invitation. NOTE: The invitation will come from noreplylivetheexperienceorg and it may be flagged by your spam filter.
2. Click the link included in your email to visit a page to set up your profile. Fill in all the fields, or only the required ones, and then click the link at the bottom. (If you are using the CCB email link, change your email address or you will not be able to use your new account.)
3. Contrary to popular opinion, once you complete these two steps, your account is NOT live and you are not logged in.
   Once you finish creating your profile, the system will generate another email that it will send to you for you to activate your account. This email has been known to take anywhere from 1 to 30 minutes to arrive in your email and it also has been known to be caught by spam filters too. While you wait, feel free to upload a custom avatar picture to your newly created profile.
4. When you receive the email activation link, and click on it, your account will now become active and you can log in. Until you click the activation link in the second email, you will not be able to log in.

This system is completely separate from the CCB. If you want to use the exact same credentials (username/password) you are free to do so, but there is no way for us to move your account over. (In reality you wouldn’t want us to because then we would know your password.)

If you have any problems, or the activation code never came through, try creating your profile again. If it doesn’t work a second time, Contact Us and we will be glad to assist you. (Know that we will refer you to these steps first, and then we can work through any glitches that you encountered in the process.)

Some people have asked why it is necessary to make the signup process this complex/vague/difficult. The answer is simple: to protect the integrity of our community. There is an army of spam “bots” out roaming the web looking to post bad content and within two weeks of having an “easier” signup process (that still included account activation links) we were hit with spam. The most secure way of protecting our community is to have manual account set-up, and the best method of protection that allows legitimate users easy access is through the invitation-only system. Invitations makes it easy for you to get signed up, and hard for spam to get in.

Thank you for wanting to join the community, and we want you included too. (We just don’t like spam. )

~The Experience Online Community Team