Atmosphere 101: Do I need to make an account?

Many of us are accustomed to creating new accounts for every new platform we encounter. On pckt.blog, the experience is different. You may already have an existing account that is compatible with pckt and not even know it!

Did you come here from bsky.app?

Great! You have an account on pckt.blog.

Just use your Bluesky username. It should look like: your-name.bsky.social

If not, that's okay too. We'll break down exactly what you need to know to get started.

pckt is one of many applications built within an open web ecosystem called the Atmosphere. Accounts created within the Atmosphere can be used across many compatible applications.

Your account and the app you use are separate things. The same account can be used across different applications, so a Bluesky account can sign in to pckt, and a pckt account can sign in to Bluesky.

To sign in to Bluesky with a pckt account:

1. visit the Bluesky login page
2. change the "Hosting Provider" from Bluesky to pds.pckt.cafe
3. sign in using your pckt handle, which looks something like: your-name.pckt.cafe

Anatomy of an Atmosphere account.

In the Atmosphere, usernames look different than you may be used to. Instead of the typical @username format, a username in the Atmosphere additionally shows where your account data is stored on the web.

The username will look like: @username.pckt.cafe

If you created your account on Bluesky, your username will look like @username.bsky.social and if your account was created on pckt.blog, your username will look like @username.pckt.cafe

In many cases, you won't need to remember where your account is located, because the platform will suggest different locations matching the first part of the username.

Another type of Atmosphere account.

In addition to these two part usernames, another type of username exists in the Atmosphere.

These usernames will look like a website: @nytimes.com for example.

When a username looks like this, we won’t be able to easily identify where the account lives, but, we are able to confirm that the person with this username is the owner of that website.

This is useful because, if The New York Times publishes something to the Atmosphere, their username being @nytimes.com confirms their identity, since it matches their website: nytimes.com.

Migrating your Atmosphere account.

One of the perks of having an account in the Atmosphere, is the ability to migrate your account from one hosting provider to another.

If you are unhappy with moderation, or other data protections on Bluesky, you can move your account to pckt or another provider. You are not locked in to one service being in charge of your data like you are on other platforms.

We won't go into detail on how to migrate here, but there are many great tools to assist with migration like PDS Moover, EU-Haul, and more.

To reiterate, your account in the Atmosphere is portable and under your control. You can use it across the many different applications in the Atmosphere, pckt.blog, bsky.app, semble.so, stream.place, to name a few.

If you want to move your data from one host to another, you’re more than welcome to.

And if you own a website you want to be associated with, you can use your website as your username.

Atmosphere accounts are one of many benefits of the open social web. And we’ve barely touched the surface of what's possible in this blog post.

If this post was at all helpful, leave a ⭐️ below to recommend it to others across the Atmosphere :)

Happy blogging,

pckt