If your Jira is public (for example, an open source project), then creating user accounts individually, as explained earlier, would become a very demanding job for your administrator. For this type of Jira setup, you can enable public signup to allow users to create accounts by themselves. Perform the following steps to enable public signup in Jira:

1. Browse to the Jira administration console
2. Select the System tab and then the General configuration option
3. Click on the Edit Settings button
4. Select Public for the Mode field
5. Click on the Update button to apply the setting

Once you have set Jira to run in Public mode, users will be able to sign up and create their own accounts from the login page:

As you will see in the Global permissions section later in this chapter, once a user signs up for a new account, they will automatically join groups with Jira user's global permission. If you have set Jira to run in Private mode, then only the administrator will be able to create new accounts.