# Quick start guide

First you’ll need to have Django and django-registration installed; for details on that, see the installation guide.

The next steps will depend on which registration workflow you’d like to use. There are three workflows built in to django-registration; one is included largely for backwards compatibility with older releases, while the other two are recommended for new installations. Those two are:

- The HMAC activation workflow, which implements a two-step process: a user signs up, then is emailed an activation link and must click it to activate the account.
- The simple one-step workflow, in which a user simply signs up and their account is immediately active and logged in.

The guide below covers use of these two workflows.

Important

Django’s authentication system must be installed

Before proceeding with either of the recommended built-in workflows, you’ll need to ensure `django.contrib.auth` has been installed (by adding it to `INSTALLED_APPS` and running `manage.py migrate` to install needed database tables). Also, if you’re making use of a custom user model, you’ll probably want to pause and read the custom user compatibility guide before using django-registration.

## Configuring the HMAC activation workflow

The configuration process for using the HMAC activation workflow is straightforward: you’ll need to specify a couple of settings, connect some URLs and create a few templates.

### Required settings

Begin by adding the following setting to your Django settings file:

`ACCOUNT_ACTIVATION_DAYS`
  This is the number of days users will have to activate their accounts after registering. If a user does not activate within that period, the account will remain permanently inactive unless a site administrator manually activates it.

For example, you might have something like the following in your Django settings:

    ACCOUNT_ACTIVATION_DAYS = 7 # One-week activation window; you may, of course, use a different value.

You’ll also need to have `django.contrib.auth` in your `INSTALLED_APPS` setting, since all of the registration workflows in django-registration make use of it.

Warning

You should not add `registration` to your `INSTALLED_APPS` setting if you’re following this document. This section is walking you through setup of the the HMAC activation workflow, and that does not make use of any custom models or other features which require `registration` to be in `INSTALLED_APPS`. Only add `registration` to your `INSTALLED_APPS` setting if you’re using the model-based activation workflow, or something derived from it.

### Setting up URLs

Each bundled registration workflow in django-registration includes a Django URLconf which sets up URL patterns for the views in django-registration, as well as several useful views in `django.contrib.auth` (e.g., login, logout, password change/reset). The URLconf for the HMAC activation workflow can be found at `registration.backends.hmac.urls`, and so can simply be included in your project’s root URL configuration. For example, to place the URLs under the prefix `/accounts/`, you could add the following to your project’s root URLconf:

    from django.conf.urls import include, url

    urlpatterns = [
        # Other URL patterns ...
        url(r'^accounts/', include('registration.backends.hmac.urls')),
        # More URL patterns ...
    ]

Users would then be able to register by visiting the URL `/accounts/register/`, log in (once activated) at `/accounts/login/`, etc.

Another `URLConf` is also provided – at `registration.auth_urls` – which just handles the Django auth views, should you want to put those at a different location.

### Required templates

You will also need to create several templates required by django-registration, and possibly additional templates required by views in `django.contrib.auth`. The templates required by django-registration are as follows; note that, with the exception of the templates used for account activation emails, all of these are rendered using a `RequestContext` and so will also receive any additional variables provided by context processors.

registration/registration_form.html

Used to show the form users will fill out to register. By default, has the following context:

`form`
  The registration form. This will likely be a subclass of `RegistrationForm`; consult Django’s forms documentation for information on how to display this in a template.

registration/registration_complete.html

Used after successful completion of the registration form. This template has no context variables of its own, and should simply inform the user that an email containing account-activation information has been sent.

registration/activate.html

Used if account activation fails. With the default setup, has the following context:

`activation_key`
  The activation key used during the activation attempt.

registration/activation_complete.html

Used after successful account activation. This template has no context variables of its own, and should simply inform the user that their account is now active.

registration/activation_email_subject.txt

Used to generate the subject line of the activation email. Because the subject line of an email must be a single line of text, any output from this template will be forcibly condensed to a single line before being used. This template has the following context:

`activation_key`
  The activation key for the new account.
`expiration_days`
  The number of days remaining during which the account may be activated.
`user`
  The user registering for the new account.
`site`
  An object representing the site on which the user registered; depending on whether `django.contrib.sites` is installed, this may be an instance of either `django.contrib.sites.models.Site` (if the sites application is installed) or `django.contrib.sites.requests.RequestSite` (if not). Consult the documentation for the Django sites framework for details regarding these objects’ interfaces.

registration/activation_email.txt

Used to generate the body of the activation email. Should display a link the user can click to activate the account. This template has the following context:

`activation_key`
  The activation key for the new account.
`expiration_days`
  The number of days remaining during which the account may be activated.
`user`
  The user registering for the new account.
`site`
  An object representing the site on which the user registered; depending on whether `django.contrib.sites` is installed, this may be an instance of either `django.contrib.sites.models.Site` (if the sites application is installed) or `django.contrib.sites.requests.RequestSite` (if not). Consult the documentation for the Django sites framework for details regarding these objects.

Note that the templates used to generate the account activation email use the extension `.txt`, not `.html`. Due to widespread antipathy toward and interoperability problems with HTML email, django-registration defaults to plain-text email, and so these templates should simply output plain text rather than HTML.

To make use of the views from `django.contrib.auth` (which are set up for you by the default URLconf mentioned above), you will also need to create the templates required by those views. Consult the documentation for Django’s authentication system for details regarding these templates.

## Configuring the simple one-step workflow

Also included is a simpler, one-step registration workflow, where a user signs up and their account is immediately active and logged in.

The simple workflow does not require any models other than those provided by Django’s own authentication system, so only `django.contrib.auth` needs to be in your `INSTALLED_APPS` setting.

You will need to configure URLs to use the simple workflow; the easiest way is to simply `include()` the URLconf `registration.backends.simple.urls` in your root URLconf. For example, to place the URLs under the prefix `/accounts/` in your URL structure:

    from django.conf.urls import include, url

    urlpatterns = [
        # Other URL patterns ...
        url(r'^accounts/', include('registration.backends.simple.urls')),
        # More URL patterns ...
    ]

Users could then register accounts by visiting the URL `/accounts/register/`.

This URLconf will also configure the appropriate URLs for the rest of the built-in `django.contrib.auth` views (log in, log out, password reset, etc.).

Finally, you will need to create one template: `registration/registration_form.html`. See the list of templates above for details of this template’s context.