solidcommunity.net Signing up is very confusing

I just entered solidcommunity.net as my IDP for an app, and tried to create an account during the sign-in process. Unfortunately, after entering my account details and clicking "Continue authorization", I get shown the following screen:

Error: "No WebIDs are assigned to this account. Edit the account to add one." With an "Edit account" link.

Clicking "Edit account" brings me here:

"These are the WebIDs you can authenticate as using this account. These WebIDs also have full control access to the pods registered for this account." There's a "Link WebID" button, but no WebIDs listed.

And then clicking "Link WebID":

A form showing "Choose the WebID to link to this account", followed by an input field.

Can't solidcommunity.net create a WebID for me together with my Pod?

Feb 20 '25 08:02 Vinnl

Ah, I had to click "Create Pod". Well, then consider this a UX feedback issue - even for someone who understands how Pods work, this was very confusing 😅

Feb 20 '25 08:02 Vinnl

Thanks for the UX feedback.

Not being a CSS expert, I think the issues relates to the multiple possibilities offered by CSS

as an IDP provider : an IDP account can have multiple WebIds
as a pod provider : an account MAY have pods on the IDP provider domain.

As a pod provider after creating an account you MAY create one or many pods, but this is not mandatory. Most user will begin with creating one as you did (the podName must not be the email userName) When creating a pod, the pod WebID is automatically added to the IDP account.

As an IDP provider you MAY also add other WebID's be it on the same domain or not.

If you have any idea on a better UX than the actual one, I think it will be very helpful.

@Vinnl do you think I shall add this explanation in https://github.com/solid/solidcommunity.net/blob/main/NSS2CSS.md#pivot-login

Feb 20 '25 12:02 bourgeoa

My suggestion would be to automatically create a Pod and a WebID for every new account - separate Pods and separate WebIDs seem like an advanced use case that those advanced users can set up themselves. This is also how solidcommunity.net worked with NSS.

I do understand that this would require changes to CSS/Pivot itself, which I get is more of a hassle - when first creating this issue I thought it was just a result of how it was configured :)

Feb 20 '25 12:02 Vinnl

Totally agree with @Vinnl , it confusing even for "solid savvy" users so I can't imagine the confusion for new-comers.

should be solve with https://github.com/solid-contrib/pivot/issues/16

Feb 20 '25 13:02 thhck

@Vinnl Did you used an account you already had on solidcommunity.net before the migration to CSS or is it a freshly created account ?

Feb 20 '25 15:02 thhck

@thhck This was a freshly created account (I wanted to test if the full setup flow still worked. (Which it didn't, but I expected that 😅)

Feb 20 '25 16:02 Vinnl