All I know so far about AO3 invites
So I've seen a couple of people having problems with finding where the AO3 (Archive of Our Own) invites are and sending them. Therefore I decided to make this quick and dirty tutorial of all I know of AO3 invites so far.
If someone knows more or I said something that's wrong please correct me in the comments.
First of all and step number one, if you want to get ANY emails from AO3 AT ALL add this email address (do-not-reply(at)archiveofourown(dot)org) to your contacts/safe email addresses. Otherwise, your invites along with any other AO3 emails might end up in the spam bin.
Any member can ask for invites, from what I saw on AO3's status twitter TL on the subject, they send out the requested invites weekly. So if you ask for an invite you might get them in a day, or have to wait up to a week. So far none of my requested invites have been rejected and I got all the invites I've requested.
ALL GRAPHICS IN THIS TUTORIAL ARE CLICKABLE. JUST CLICK ON THEM TO MAKE BIGGER.
If you want to access your invites go to My Home, Dashboard, Invitations as shown in the graphic below.
Once in Invitations if you have any available invitations you'll see this screen.
From there you can send the invites you have available to any email address. They should receive an email from AO3 with a link for them to sign up. Very much like when you invite someone to join Facebook.
However, since a bunch of us are inviting people at the same time we're crashing their email system. So to be on the safe side, once you send the invite you'll get this other screen.
Hover your mouse over that Copy link that says "copy and use" that's the link to the invite you just sent. To be safe, I assigned an invite to an email (so that I don't accidentally send it to another person since invites can only be used once. That's why they have that long-ass token number you'll see when you send one.) Anywho, hover your mouse over "copy and use" do right-click, and save the link (DON'T CLICK ON THE LINK, JUST HOVER OVER IT.) Email or PM that link to the person you just invited. That way if they don't receive the AO3 email or goes to their Spam bin, they still can open their account without waiting.
If you send an invite and it's never used, you can reassign that invite by updating the email to which it was sent or just sending the "copy and use" direct link to another person. The invites can only be used once so once that "copy and use" link is used no one else can access it or reuse it.
How do you know if you have unused invites?
Here, within Invitations you have 3 menus: Invitations (from where you send invites,) Manage Invitations (where you can see all your invitations, emails of who you send them to, user names they chose, and the direct links to any unused invites you have left) and finally the Request More tab (where you request more invites if you need them.)
If you ran out of invites, or are a new member you need to request invitations you can send to other people.
For that go here once you're logged in: http://archiveofourown.org/user_invite_requests/new
As shown in this graphic below:
Your reason to request invites doesn't have to be awesome, I for one only said that I had friends who wanted to join and the waiting list for invites was too long. Just remember to be polite, since AO3 is a fan-run, fan-funded site and everyone who works there is volunteering their time and money. They are not doing this for money, just for the love they have for fanfiction so have that in mind when and if the site crashes and if you find a feature that fails. The site is in beta for a reason, beta means it's not officially launched and it's sort of in trial, testing all the features before allowing everyone to join. That's the reason they have this invite system. Because if they were to allow everyone to join their site would crash more often.
Luckily, this new deluge of users may work on their favor because they may receive more donations and people who volunteer their time and skills to make the site better faster.
If you have any such skills and the time to lend them I would advise you to contact the admins. There's a Donate/Volunteer link at the bottom of each page on the site.
If someone knows more or I said something that's wrong please correct me in the comments.
First of all and step number one, if you want to get ANY emails from AO3 AT ALL add this email address (do-not-reply(at)archiveofourown(dot)org) to your contacts/safe email addresses. Otherwise, your invites along with any other AO3 emails might end up in the spam bin.
Any member can ask for invites, from what I saw on AO3's status twitter TL on the subject, they send out the requested invites weekly. So if you ask for an invite you might get them in a day, or have to wait up to a week. So far none of my requested invites have been rejected and I got all the invites I've requested.
ALL GRAPHICS IN THIS TUTORIAL ARE CLICKABLE. JUST CLICK ON THEM TO MAKE BIGGER.
If you want to access your invites go to My Home, Dashboard, Invitations as shown in the graphic below.
Once in Invitations if you have any available invitations you'll see this screen.
From there you can send the invites you have available to any email address. They should receive an email from AO3 with a link for them to sign up. Very much like when you invite someone to join Facebook.
However, since a bunch of us are inviting people at the same time we're crashing their email system. So to be on the safe side, once you send the invite you'll get this other screen.
Hover your mouse over that Copy link that says "copy and use" that's the link to the invite you just sent. To be safe, I assigned an invite to an email (so that I don't accidentally send it to another person since invites can only be used once. That's why they have that long-ass token number you'll see when you send one.) Anywho, hover your mouse over "copy and use" do right-click, and save the link (DON'T CLICK ON THE LINK, JUST HOVER OVER IT.) Email or PM that link to the person you just invited. That way if they don't receive the AO3 email or goes to their Spam bin, they still can open their account without waiting.
If you send an invite and it's never used, you can reassign that invite by updating the email to which it was sent or just sending the "copy and use" direct link to another person. The invites can only be used once so once that "copy and use" link is used no one else can access it or reuse it.
How do you know if you have unused invites?
Here, within Invitations you have 3 menus: Invitations (from where you send invites,) Manage Invitations (where you can see all your invitations, emails of who you send them to, user names they chose, and the direct links to any unused invites you have left) and finally the Request More tab (where you request more invites if you need them.)
If you ran out of invites, or are a new member you need to request invitations you can send to other people.
For that go here once you're logged in: http://archiveofourown.org/user_invite_requests/new
As shown in this graphic below:
Your reason to request invites doesn't have to be awesome, I for one only said that I had friends who wanted to join and the waiting list for invites was too long. Just remember to be polite, since AO3 is a fan-run, fan-funded site and everyone who works there is volunteering their time and money. They are not doing this for money, just for the love they have for fanfiction so have that in mind when and if the site crashes and if you find a feature that fails. The site is in beta for a reason, beta means it's not officially launched and it's sort of in trial, testing all the features before allowing everyone to join. That's the reason they have this invite system. Because if they were to allow everyone to join their site would crash more often.
Luckily, this new deluge of users may work on their favor because they may receive more donations and people who volunteer their time and skills to make the site better faster.
If you have any such skills and the time to lend them I would advise you to contact the admins. There's a Donate/Volunteer link at the bottom of each page on the site.