User account

To register as a user at SCAtoday.net, you must supply a valid email address. Please type carefully, because if you misspell your address, the system will not be able to send out your password. As an anti-spam measure, all new user accounts must be approved by our administrative team. We are sorry for any inconvenience, but the spammers have gotten really bad lately.

If you use a challenge-response antispam system, you will need to whitelist the domain scatoday.net before you sign up for an account. We do not have the time to respond to "please validate this email" requests from everyone's antispam system.

During account setup, you will be asked to enter text to verify that you are a human and not a spambot. You should not put personal (modern world) contact information into that field (we don't need or want that), but do make your response sufficiently topic-specific that we can tell you have a connection to the topic of this site.

Please note that, while we welcome and encourage you to create an account, there is no members-only content on this site. Only members are allowed to contribute comments or articles, but anyone is welcome to read our articles without logging in.

Finally, remember that while this site is owned and operated by devoted members of the SCA, SCAtoday.net is an independent web site not officially sanctioned by the SCA Inc. You do not need to sign up for an account here in order to join the SCA.

Notice to would-be spammers:

Lately we have had a lot of spammers sign up for bogus user accounts just so they can post content onto this site. We do not allow unmoderated posts of any kind on this site, so your advertising will never be published, and your account will simply be deleted. Please don't waste your time or ours trying this, as it won't work here.

Account information
Spaces are allowed; punctuation is not allowed except for periods, hyphens, and underscores.
A valid e-mail address. All e-mails from the system will be sent to this address. The e-mail address is not made public and will only be used if you wish to receive a new password or wish to receive certain news or notifications by e-mail.
Human Validation

We have had a very bad problem with spammers using robot programs or low-cost laborers to create multiple accounts for spamming. Please identify your connection to the living history community, or other reason for requesting an account. The explanation does not need to be detailed or provide personal contact info -- just tell us enough so that we know you are a real person and not a spambot. Thinking about your persona or your SCA locale or your historical interest will suggest some things that you can say, that spammers would not know how to do. PLEASE NOTE: Spambots can put in things like "nice web site" or "this history info is interesting" -- please give us more to look at than this, although you needn't write a long essay.

Here are some examples of responses that are too vague for approval:

  • "To comment on articles."
    Thousands of web sites require login in order to comment, so spambots routinely generate responses like this.
  • "To keep up with the latest news."
    This would apply just as much to modern-world news outlets as it does to ours. Again, spambots routinely generate this as random text.
  • "Because I am intersted in the topic."
    Of course. And if our topic happened to be microprocessors or the latest Paris fashions, this generic response would be just as appropos.
  • "For advertising."
    Merchants take note: It is perfectly okay to apply for an account here so you can contribute a "weblink" to your business site -- but we carefully "jury" merchant links to keep them on-topic. If you are applying for an account so you can add your merchant link, please tell us in this field a sentence or two about the nature of your business, so we know you're on-topic for us and can expedite approval of your account.

We are very sorry for the inconvenience of this validation field, but since implementing it we have dramatically reduced the effort our all-volunteer staff must dedicate to spam prevention. There are literally hundreds of accounts requested each week by spammers, and we work hard to ensure they don't reach your web browser. Thank you for your understanding; we hope you feel the spam-free site is worth the extra inconvenience as you create your account.

This field is private and is viewable only by our administrative team and by you. However, if you leave it blank or fill it with random text we will not approve the account.

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.