WordPress.com Connect
Related
Chances are that you’re here because you use (or would like to use) one of the fancy products created by Automattic — perhaps VaultPress, Akismet, Polldaddy, Gravatar, or IntenseDebate — and you’ve been asked to create or log into a WordPress.com account to do so. This page is here to help explain why.
What does WordPress.com have to do with VaultPress, Akismet, Polldaddy, Gravatar, and IntenseDebate?
WordPress.com is a hosted web service built on the popular open source blog and site creation tool available for free at WordPress.org. The service or product you’d like to use is one of the suite of products made by Automattic, the company that runs WordPress.com.
With WordPress.com Connect, one username and one password allows you to access your VaultPress dashboard, or change your Gravatar photo, or log in to your Polldaddy account to check survey results, or log into your IntenseDebate account to make a comment — just for example. You save time and hassle not having to maintain and remember unique login credentials for each service.
I use WordPress to run a blog or website, how does this new system affect that?
It depends on whether you’re already a WordPress.com user or if you host your own site.
If you run your blog on WordPress.com or already have an account here, you won’t need a new account at all. Simply sign in with your existing WordPress.com account and we’ll redirect you back to the service of your choice as a logged in user.
Note: If you are already a user of Akismet or VaultPress, or have installed Jetpack on your blog, you already have a WordPress.com account which you can use to sign in.
However, if you or your company downloaded and installed the free and open-source software available on WordPress.org, and you’ve never signed up for Jetpack or VaultPress or Akismet before, the new WordPress.com account you create won’t affect your self-hosted installation one bit (How do you know if you’re self-hosted? Being able to install your own themes and run your own plugins is a good indicator that you’re self-hosted).
Why do I have to “approve” WordPress.com’s connection to my account?
This question has a complicated and technical answer, but for our purposes here, if you’ve ever used Facebook or Twitter to log into a service online, you’re doing the same kind of thing as we’re doing with WordPress.com and Automattic’s other services. As of right now, the only information WordPress.com shares to these services is your username, name, and email address.
Does it cost anything or will I get any spam from creating this new account?
It costs nothing, and you’ll get no spam from us. You can read our fascinating terms of service to learn more.
