Message Board registration process

[Karl Rudnick]

With the on-line NCCC membership signup/renewal, all NCCC members are now automatically registered on this Message Board. Your NCCC membership username and password also logs you onto this Message Board. Take advantage of this Board for dynamic discussions. You can turn on notification (Notify button upper right on either the full Message Board or individual topics) to receive emails when new posts occur, so you don't miss out on the action. Don't forget to visit the Website board where some additional handy tips and advice have been cataloged as we have become familiar with the Simple Machines Forum (SMF) software.

Registered users can now post stuff for sale at the For Sale by Members board.

For non-NCCC members, the notes below detail how to register. These are provided because of an earlier article November 2007 NCCC Newsletter tip on using this Message Board more effectively. You may wish to print this out to make it even easier to follow. Club policy also requires registration for posting new topics and replies.

1. If you are logged in as Guest, at the upper left you will be asked to please login or register. Press the register link (underlined). Fill in the boxes displayed:
a. Choose username: [suggest all lower case, no blanks or punctuation - can have a different name displayed with your activity - see 10.  below]
b. Email: [this must be valid. Double check it for correctness or registration will fail. You will be sent an e-mail very quickly to confirm your membership, at which point all the extra features of the forum are yours to use.]
c. Choose password: [suggest something simple, certainly nothing used for your bank, etc. There is no sensitive info saved on the site, so identity theft is not a problem]
d. Verify password: [repeat to make sure step c. took]
e. Visual verification; [enter the letters for the graphic you see. This is a CAPTCHA - "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart", used to ensure an automated computer program is not registering on our site. If it is hard to read, you can click to listen to it on your computer's speakers or request another image (should not be necessary)]

The next 2 questions were added solely to keep automated computer programs (spam bots) from registering - not to show intelligence or maturity  

f. First name of 2004 Tour de France winner:  [enter Lance]
g. I am at least 3 years old: [check the box]

2. Read the guidelines after answering the above. These are as they always have been. They make sense.

3. Check "I agree"

4. Press "Register" button

5. Open up your Email application. You should receive a "Welcome to North County Cycle Club Forum" message in just a few seconds.  If you do not get this e-mail, you probably mis-typed your e-mail address, the most common error in registering. Just register again or e-mail admin@northcountycycleclub.com and I will be happy to get you over that hump.

6. Your membership will not be fully enabled until you click the link in the e-mail. It should look something like:
http://northcountycycleclub.com/smf/index.php?action=activate;u=52;code=XXXXXXXX

7. This should take you to a login screen - browser title "Registration successful" - with the username you entered in 1a. Please enter the password from 1c,d. It is recommended that you click on "Always stay logged in". When running from the same computer, you will never have to login or even remember your password (although you may wish to save it in your browser if you enabled your browser to do it).

8. At any later time, when you login you will always be logged on as "username". Should, for some reason, you press Logout, you will have to Login again - make sure the "Forever" option is set just to the left of "Login" so you won't have to do it again. Besides not having to type your password, there are additional advantages of being logged in Forever: you can post immediately; you can vote in polls; the software knows which messages you haven't read and tags them with a blue "new" label; email notification works better if you have it enabled as once you get a notification, you will not get another until you have read at least one message - you need to be logged in so that the software recognizes you have done that, which then enables notification for the next message which comes in.

9. Since you won't be typing in your password often, you can sometimes lose it. To guard against that, click on "Profile" button and select "Account Related Settings" under Modify Profile on the left. There you can enter a Secret question. Should you forget your password later, this secret question will allow  the software to automatically help you get back on-line. If all else fails, please email me: admin@northcountycycleclub.com and I will be happy to reset it for you - that will be a rare occurrence (if it happens, you won't be the first  , so no need to be embarrassed).

10. Finally, if you used a cryptic login username, like "krustykrixkoral", you might prefer something like "Chris" to be displayed with your posts and personal messages. That way people will know who you are and will have no idea what your login name is. To do this, click the "Profile" button, and select "Account Related Settings" under Modify Profile on the left. At the top, you will see "Name: This is the displayed name that people will see." The default is the same as your login name but you can set it as you please - resetting at any time, changes your name in all OLD posts as well - neat. This also applies to those who have renewed (or signed up) online for NCCC membership - that automatically gives you a login on this Message Board and your display name is set rather formally to "First Last" name. You may prefer something less formal, or the name by which all your cycling friends recognize you.

Thanks to those who have registered! To those who are motivated to do so by this note, enjoy - the mgmt

[Christina]

Thanks for posting!