An Easy Guide To BlueSky Verification
BlueSky BSky HowTo tutorial · 13 comments · 500 words · read ~1,096 times.
The new Twitter-Wannabe BlueSky has an interesting approach to verifying accounts. Rather than you sending in your passport, or paying a 3rd party, or bribing an employee - you can self-verify for free!
This opens up verification to small organisations, individuals, and anyone who wants to prove who they are. Brilliant!
Verification means that your @username will change to @Your.Website.com - this means that everyone can see your BlueSky account is owned by that specific website. When you change your name, you keep all your followers and posts.
Here are some organisations and people at risk of impersonation who have already done this:
- UK Newspaper https://bsky.app/profile/theguardian.com
- Trade Union https://bsky.app/profile/utaw.tech
- Labour MPs https://bsky.app/profile/sarahowen.org.uk
- Small Publisher https://bsky.app/profile/canongate.co.uk
- Fun Website https://bsky.app/profile/openbenches.org
There is an easy way to get verified and a hard way. Let's do the easy way!
1) Sign Up For BlueSky
Sign up and register a username. This can be anything you want. For example, I registered edent.bsky.social
2) Change Your User ID
Follow these steps:
- Visit https://bsky.app/settings
- Scroll down and select "Change Handle"
- Click "I have my own domain"
- Select "No DNS Panel". The screen should look like this:
- Type in the domain name you want to verify
- Click "Copy File Contents"
Keep this web page open.
3) Copy and Save Your DID
On your clipboard, you will have a bit of text which looks like this did:plc:dip7ueksh627fxacagfrdyz2
Save it in a text file called atproto-did
It is very important that the file doesn't end with .txt - it must be called atproto-did and nothing else.
The file should only contain the text you copied. Nothing else.
4) Upload The File To Your Website
This is the only technical bit of the process. You need the ability to upload a file to your website. I don't know whether you use FTP, a control panel, or email things to the person who manages your site.
You need to save the atproto-did file in a folder called /.well-known/
If that folder doesn't exist, create it. The folder name must be typed exactly like that, with the dot at the start.
You can check it has worked by visiting YourWebsite.com/.well-known/atproto-did
If you can see your DID, it worked!
5) Change Your Username
Go back to the "Change Handle" web page you opened in Step 2.
Click "Verify Text File" and then "Update".
6) That's It!
Feel free to share this guide with people and organisations who want to get verified on BSky.
Leave a comment if you found it useful or want me to clarify something.
A few thoughts on domain verification for social media
doowruc says:
Hi Terence, thanks for the great simple guide!
Do you have to keep the file at that location to keep the handle verified, or is it a one-off verification which you can then delete?
I have a domain which I currently only host email on which I want to use for my handle. If I am able to temporarily spin up a web site to host the file, verify, then tear down, that would be awesome!
Cheers
@edent says:
From my testing, it appears you do need to keep the file there permanently. If it is removed, BSky may revoke your username.
dooorwuc says:
Ha, I should have followed the "hard way" link before asking 🙂 I see I can set up a DNS TXT record. I'll do that!
Jon Ribbens says:
Yeah, I think for some of us the "hard way" is in fact the "easy way" 😉
Strangely, when I copied the file contents, I got a string that looked like:
That wouldn’t verify at Bluesky, but when I removed the leading
did=, it, um, did. Not sure if that was just a glitch on my part or not, but if anyone else isn’t getting verification to work, check to see if this will fix it.I know you're not bluesky, but this is much less straightforward than the "I send you an email, and you click the verification link" pattern.
@edent says:
That doesn't prove you own the domain though. Otherwise anyone could prove themselves to be Hotmail, Gmail, their Uni, etc.
@Eric looks like you copied the DNS verification string
After you change the handle, the old handle (under the bsky.social) will become available to everyone. I just changed my handle to my domain, and then I created a backup account with the old handle under bsky.social. (Just to be safe :D)
It is so easy to do and it annoys me that brands and not doing this.
Thanks for writing this, I followed the 'hard' way and it worked perfectly. Now I just need to relaunch my website!
Thanks for the write-up. I was able to become verified, but how can one tell looking at a bluesky profile whether it is verified or not?
@edent says:
Because anyone on the platform can see your username is your domain. You are https://bsky.app/profile/bsigmon.github.io
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