Account and channels - Hubzilla is a bit different
With social networks or social media platforms, you are used to having an identity and thus an ‘address’ for the service as soon as you create an account.
This applies to both the big tech networks and most services in the Fediverse.
If you create an account on Mastodon, for example, you also create an identity with a ‘Mastodon address’ (handle in the form @beispielnutzer@masto-server.net).
With that you can get started immediately and be in the Fediverse. It's the same with TwiXtter. You create an account and with the login name you also create your X-address.
Hubzilla is a bit different. When you register at a Hubzilla server (called a hub), you don't yet have an address in the Fediverse. You have a login name and a password, and you can log in to the hub. But not much more. To get more, you now need an identity, i.e. a Fediverse name.
There are hubs where you create this handle right at registration. And there are hubs where you are redirected to the mask for creating the handle after registering or after logging in with the new account for the first time.
At Hubzilla, the identity is called ‘Channel’ and the address is called ‘Channel Handle’.
This separation also has a great advantage, because it makes the identity independent from the hub and allows it to be transferred to other hubs. This is even possible while maintaining the channel on the original hub. And the clones created in this way are also automatically synchronised with the ‘original’. That is the ‘nomadic identity’ of Hubzilla.
Another advantage is that it also allows identification with other hubs. This is known as remote authentication, which can even be fully automated in some cases (Magic Auth). If you follow a link from your Hubzilla channel that leads to another hub, you will be automatically authenticated at the destination hub and, if applicable, can view and in some cases interact with content that is not open to everyone.
Finally, the separation of account and identity means that you can create multiple channels with a single account. With most other services, you have to create a new account for this and – depending on which handle you want to use – log out and log in again with the other account. With Hubzilla, you log in once and can switch between channels via a menu.
In addition to Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte offer this option. Friendica also allows you to create multiple accounts (identities) and manage them under one main account. This feels similar, but functionally it does not correspond to the channel function of Hubzilla.
If you have a PeerTube account, you may be familiar with creating multiple channels... and YouTube also allows you to manage multiple video channels under one account.
So to summarise:
When you register with a hub using Hubzilla, you get an account that you can use to log in to the hub. However, this is not an identity and you cannot use the account to appear in the Fediverse. Instead, Hubzilla offers channels. They are your identity in the Fediverse and have a channel handle (‘Fediverse address’). You can create multiple channels with a single account. And you can move a channel and its contents to another hub or run a clone of the channel on another hub at the same time (and use it if the home hub ever takes a ‘break’), with the clones automatically synchronising with the home channel.