Members and Friends,
Today, Wednesday, March, 13, 2013 we would like to announce that all active and some expired members have been added to the member database and are now able to log in as members. Active members will receive an e-mail with their ID and a temporary password. Expired members will also receive an ID/Password combination but there is a difference in the actions available to them. See the section titled Expired Members.
ACTIVE MEMBERS: Once you receive your e-mail, it is important for you to do the following.
1. Log in with your new ID and temporary Password - you will be required to change the password once logged in. Please remember this password. We can reset it, but we would rather not. If we do, you will have to go through the login and change password process again
2. All Active members who have not paid their 2013 dues will note that they are due by 3/31/2013. You will be asked if you wish to pay them and if so you will be taken directly to the Renewal Wizard. It will walk you through the payment process using your credit card. Credit cards can be either MasterCard or Visa. During the process you may be given several options other than payment by these two cards. Please do not select anything but payment by card. If you are unable to pay using a Visa or MasterCard, please contact me immediately. A few of you have already paid your 2013 dues. We have sent this with the data upload and you should not be sent to the Renewal Wizard. You will go directly to your Contac Info. If this does not occur, contact Paul Tarver.
3. If you do not wish to pay your annual dues at this point you may navigate away by canceling the process. You have until March 31 to pay your dues. After that they are overdue, but you have a 60 day window in which to pay them. Next year that 60 day window will only be 30 days, but you will have been given e-mail notification two times before your Expiration Date and once afterwards.
4. Next, please review your personal information and verify that it is correct. YOU CAN DO THIS BY CLICKING ON THE PROFILE LINK RIGHT BELOW YOUR NAME! During this process you have the opportunity to correct information and choose how much information is shown on the member directory. Initially we have set up the member directory for everyone showing all the contact information that we have currently. This includes home addresses, contact phone numbers, and e-mail. You have the option to choose the level of detail shown in the directory, from not appearing in the directory at all, to having all of your contact information shown. The choice is yours. However, we recommend that you do this at the first sign-in so that only the level of detail you wish to share with other members is in the directory.
You are now able to utilize the full capabilities of the website. You may see all the information that we provide, and may participate in the Forums. We request that after you have had a little while to explore you give us your first thoughts via our first ever "official" Survey.
A tip to get you started is to check out the Homepage and see a description of all of the tabs to which you have access.
NOTE: You may set up all of your e-mail preferences for the Forums in your contact information. You may also change your e-mail preferences once you join a Forum specifically for that Forum.
EXPIRED MEMBERS:
Your situation is somewhat different. We went back and reviewed our records, especially what you had told us about your reasons for not remaining an active member. Those of you who are listed as expired members were still on our contact list and we know that you still had some interest in the club. At the time you decided not to renew your membership you had very good reasons for not doing so. We respect those reasons and if they still are valid, we'll continue to contact you on a regular basis letting you know when meetings are occurring. However, we thought that perhaps some of you might have changed situations and might want to reevaluate your active membership. For this reason we decided to include you in the member database. The website allows us to make it easier for you at any time to renew your membership.
You also will get an e-mail with an ID and temporary password. The difference is when you sign on you will be taken directly to the Renewal Wizard. You may renew your membership at that time. You may also cancel out of the renewal Wizard. If you cancel out of the Renewal Wizard, you will be retained on our e-mail list, but you will not be allowed to log into the rest of the website. At this point it's our understanding that at any time you login and pay the yearly dues you will once again become an active member. Whenever that occurs you would then want to follow the procedure above for active members.
NON-MEMBERS:
There is a separate database for those of you who have expressed interest in the club and to whom we have been sending meeting notices. Your data has also been sent to Club Express and uploaded. You will be sent e-mails automatically informing you of meetings and general events. You may also be sent other special e-mails specifically intended to make you aware of some special activities. You will receive no e-mail notification and you may not see nor change your information on the website. In the event that you wish to make a change in this information you will need to contact Tom Horner, Member Manager, to make those changes.
In the event that you decide to become a member there are two approaches you may take. You may send Tom Horner an e-mail letting him know you wish to become a member. Tom will change your record to a member and you will receive an e-mail notifying you to login and make your payment. Or, you can simply on the Member Signup tab and follow directions. This will create a new account and we will need to go in and remove your nonmember account from the database. Either of these options is acceptable and quite easy for us to do.
We will be sending out a final announcement for the March 17 meeting on Friday of this week, so you will not miss the information about this coming meeting. In future, meeting notifications for nonmembers will be automatically generated the same as for members.
Until then, you'll still be able to access the website as a visitor and check out everything that is open to nonmembers. Note that a description of all of the tabs is available to you on the Homepage including those pages you can and cannot access.
If there are any questions, please contact me as usual. The information is all there on the website.
John