Signing in, and password recovery

This page covers signing in on the Ilena sign-in page, and what to do if you've forgotten your password. Signing in is now a page of its own, separate from the editor — the same sign-in also opens your account area and, once they exist, a data console and an administration console.

Signing in

Enter your email and password and submit, or use Continue with Google if you created your account that way. A few things you might see instead of landing in the editor:

• Invalid credentials — the email or password doesn't match. Double check both, and mind extra spaces.
• Your email is not verified yet — you created an account but never clicked the verification link. Check your inbox for it; if it's gone, the signup flow's email step offers a resend, or contact [email protected].
• A connection or server error — try again in a moment.

Don't have an account yet? Use Create one, which leads to the signup flow.

If your account signs in with Google

An account created with Continue with Google doesn't keep a password in Ilena — Google is what checks your identity. If you once had a password for that account and it's now refused with Invalid credentials, that isn't a bug: a Google account's password no longer works, on purpose. Use Continue with Google instead, the same way you always could.

The same applies on the account screen:

• You cannot change the password. There is none to change, so the account screen shows a one-sentence explanation in place of the password form rather than a form that would always fail.
• Asking for a password reset does nothing, quietly. Forgot your password? accepts a Google address and reports success, but sends no email. It answers the same way for every address on purpose: an answer that differed would tell anyone who asked whether a given address has an account here.

Where signing in takes you

Opening Ilena requires an active subscription. If your account exists and its email is verified, but you've never subscribed, signing in sends you to the billing-cycle step of the signup flow instead of the editor — the same step described in Choosing your billing cycle. This is the normal outcome if you closed the signup flow before choosing a plan, or if you created your account with Continue with Google, which verifies your email before any payment is collected. This entry has its own explanation line and no progress bar, since the rest of signup is already done:

Once you provide a payment method there, you'll briefly see an Activating your subscription screen while Ilena finishes setting up your subscription — this is the expected next step after a successful payment, not an error, and it usually takes under a minute:

Your payment details are already saved at that point, so if it takes longer than expected, use Check again rather than starting over; nothing is charged twice.

If your account opens something — Ilena itself, or one of the consoles — signing in is a change of state on the page you were already reading, not a departure from it: you return to the page you signed in from, and open what you're entitled to from the Application menu in the header. If you opened the sign-in page directly (typing its address, or arriving from another site) there's no page to return to, so you land on the landing page's home instead. A data console and an administration console exist for the accounts meant to use them; both are on their way and show as coming soon today.

If your account doesn't match anything at all — no editor, no console — signing in still succeeds, and you land on your account page, which shows your status instead of a blank screen or the editor half-loading.

Forgotten your password?

This is self-serve — no need to contact support. From the sign-in page, click Forgot your password?:

Enter your email and submit. Ilena always shows the same confirmation — "If we know this address, an email is on its way. The link is valid for one hour. Check your spam folder." — whether or not that address has an account, so this step never confirms or denies who's registered.

This also holds for an account that signs in with Google: you'll see the very same confirmation, but no email follows, because that account has no password in Ilena to reset. Use Continue with Google on the sign-in page instead.

If a matching account exists, you'll receive an email with a reset link. Opening it brings you to a page to choose a new password:

The same requirements apply as at signup: 8–20 characters, with an uppercase letter, a lowercase letter, a digit, and a special character, and both fields must match. One rule is stricter here than at signup: the new password can't be one of your last five, and reusing an old one is refused with a message that says so.

Submitting confirms the change on the same page — nothing redirects you, so follow Go to sign-in when you're ready — and signs you out of any other device where you were still signed in, since resetting a password is usually what you do when you suspect someone else has access.

If the link is missing its token, invalid, or expired, the page tells you so and offers to request a new one — reset links don't last forever, so if you waited a while, ask for a fresh link rather than retrying the old one.