[ixuz]

What and why

A newcomer without a Pod could only be sent to iGrant.io Data Pod to create one. It was the only provider in POD_PROVIDERS with a signUpUrl, and nothing said why the other three had none. If someone didn't want a Pod there, or their sign-up failed, the app gave them nowhere else to go. That undercuts Solid's promise that you choose where your data lives.

I checked each provider's sign-up page on 2026-10-24. solidcommunity.net, Inrupt PodSpaces and solidweb.me all let anyone sign up, with no invite and no waiting list. Each now has a signUpUrl, so all four are offered on the first step:

Provider	Sign-up page
iGrant.io Data Pod	https://igrant.io/datapod.html (unchanged)
solidcommunity.net	https://solidcommunity.net/.account/login/password/register/
Inrupt PodSpaces	https://start.inrupt.com/
solidweb.me	https://solidweb.me/.account/login/password/register/

• solidcommunity.net and solidweb.me run the Community Solid Server. The links go straight to its "Create account" page, and the Pod is created from the account's page after that.
• Inrupt PodSpaces is a Developer Preview, which Inrupt says is not for production use or for sensitive or personal data. It is offered because anyone can sign up there, and docs/onboarding.md notes the caveat.
• docs/onboarding.md has a new "Offered for creating a Pod" section. It lists the providers offered and their sign-up pages, and says what to do when a provider's sign-up closes or comes to need an invite: remove its signUpUrl and write down why.

A separate commit fixes npm run check:providers. It asked every URL for JSON first, sign-up pages included. The Community Solid Server serves its "Create account" page only to a request that prefers HTML and answers 404 otherwise, so both new links would have failed the weekly check while working in every browser. The check now asks for the issuer's discovery document as JSON and for a sign-up page as HTML, as a browser does. It has a test of its own, and docs/testing.md says so.

With both commits, npm run check:providers reports all 4 providers answering.

Closes: #283

Checklist

• One issue. This pull request addresses one issue, linked above.
• One step. This pull request does not finish its issue, so it says Refs:, not Closes:. Leave this unchecked otherwise.
• Done, as AGENTS.md defines it: npm run check passes (lint, Markdown and spelling included), npm run lint:reuse too if a file was added, and npm run crosscheck too if ns/ or decks/ changed. (npm run check passes on each commit; n/a for lint:reuse and crosscheck: no file was added, and ns/ and decks/ are unchanged)
• Tests. New and changed code has its tests, and every package stays at 100% coverage (docs/testing.md).
• Docs. The docs say what changed, and a new page in docs/ is listed in docs/docs.ttl. (docs/onboarding.md and docs/testing.md updated; no new page)
• Languages. A new or changed message is in every locale: en, sv, ko, de, es and fr (packages/ui/src/i18n/). (n/a: no message changed)
• Vocabulary and shapes. Any change to ns/ was agreed in an issue first; no published ns/shapes/*/vN.ttl or decks/*/vN.ttl was edited; generated files were regenerated, not edited. (n/a: ns/ and decks/ are unchanged)
• Breaking? Nothing in the public API breaks, or a commit says so (! and a BREAKING CHANGE: footer). npm run check:breaking sees a line of api/ that goes, but not a feature removed, nor a reader that reads less than before. (only entries added to POD_PROVIDERS)
• Pod data. Any change to what the app writes to a pod comes with its migration (docs/migrations.md). (n/a: nothing written to a pod changes)
• Policy. Any change to an external rule the code follows (SM-2, the plural rules, a specification) is cited. (n/a)
• Licenses. New content is MIT, or a deck states its own license; a new file has its SPDX header (npm run lint:reuse), or a new deck its line in REUSE.toml; third-party content is credited. (n/a: no new file or deck)
• Architecture. Imports follow docs/boundaries.md and the layers of docs/architecture.md. (no imports changed)
• Run. I ran the app (npm run dev) and tried the change, and considered the user journeys.
• Authorship. I read and understand every line of this pull request, and answer for it, whatever tools helped write it (CONTRIBUTING.md).
• Commits. Each commit is one logical change, in Conventional Commits form (type(scope): subject, ! and a BREAKING CHANGE: footer if it breaks something), with an imperative subject and a body that explains why (CONTRIBUTING.md).