3. How to use it ?

After you have created your Vaultwarden instance it is time to use it and start creating accounts. In this small tutorial we will describe the process of how a friend or family member can create an account and how it can be used with the Bitwarden extensions and applications. If you want to invite a friend or family member to join your server then you can do so in two ways.  

1.  SignUp Page: The first one is to let them go to your instance website e.g vw.example.org and let them sign up for an account. Now, this is an easy method but this also means that you need to have sign up on. This is of course a security risk even though it is not that big if only your friends know about it
2. Invitation Links: The second method is to go into your admin page and create invitation links for your friends that only they can openn. Simply go to your admin page -> users -> then at the bottom there is an option to send an invitation link.

Hence, if you don't want to run a public instance it is best to leave sign ups off and only send invitation links to your friends and family. 

Turn off Sign Ups

To turn off sign ups you should go login in your admin page and take the following steps

1. Go to Settings -> General Settings
2. Toggle off Allow new Signups (it is in yellow ;))

Sweet! now only people can sign up for your vault if they receive an invitation link from you via the admin panel

After they have created an account they can start using these credentials for logging in to all Bitwarden applications on all devices. The only thing they need to make sure of is that they select your self hosted server when they want to log in.

Vaultwarden Folders

First of all it is recommended to create separate folders for different types of credentials. You can of course choose whatever you want but a basic structure could be as follows

1. Shapps: A folder for all your self hosted apps either hosted by your or by one of friends/family members
2. Home lab: If you have a homelab then you can store all your network equipment, proxmox, nas and other infrastructure credentials in here
3. Personal: For all your personal accounts i.e Identity, Passports, Licenses, etcetera
4. Bank Accounts: Well pretty self explanatory
5. Backupfriends: Credentials you keep track of for family members or friends, but also credentials you use to login to a backup server of one of your friends
6. Accounts: This is a general account folder for all accounts on third party apps that are not self hosted or hosted by one of your friends.

New Entries

Now, if you create a new entry inside Bitwarden it is recommended to do this in the following way for accounts

1. Create a new Bitwarden Entry
2. Select the right folder
3. Give it a proper name i.e remove the website or app link as a Name for the entry
4. In the case of accounts that work in the web browser as on your phone/tablet etcetera make sure you add all the different links to your entry. For android apps this is always androidapp:// followed by the app link. In this way your credentials will always show up instead of that you need to search for them in Bitwarden.