Northwest Blacksmith Association

Web Member User Access, Possible Troubles

How Our Website Membership Works

Anyone is free to browse most of our website. There are some areas that require that the web user be a member of the NWBA to enable access to these members only areas. To post to our forum, and comment on articles, one does not have to be an NWBA member but has to register at our website as a Subscriber.  All website users must register online to be able to post to the forum, NWBA members and non-members alike.  The web user membership is updated with a database routine to upgrade all current website users who are also NWBA members to “Contributor” (a somewhat arbitrary label, used to identify NWBA members). This updating uses the current NWBA administration roster (all paid up NWBA members – and for website purposes we give at least a quarter year grace period), comparing the email addresses of web users to the email addresses in the current NWBA member roster.  The email address from the NWBA roster has to be the same email address as the one used to register online. If you used a different web address to sign up online than you did when filling out your NWBA member registration information then your website user account will not be upgraded to allow access to members only areas.

Usually this is not a problem for people, they simply have one email address. But many web users have multiple addresses, personal and business, and may not have used the same address for both NWBA and www.blacksmith.org registrations.  If you are having problems accessing the member areas of this website: first, check to see if your NWBA membership is current (contact NWBA Secretary Brent Christiansen, 503-663-3919
metalartsman@comcast.net), then contact the webmaster@blacksmith.org and we will do what we can to troubleshoot your web access.

Why I Suspect More Trouble Than Usual  (SEE UPDATE BELOW)

The website membership database was updated this afternoon. Usually  there are about 250 NWBA members who are also web users. When the update is run it shows how many were upgraded to NWBA status, usually around 250 give or take. Today the number was only 105. The roster did not look much different to me than usual, about 480 members with email addresses. The upgrade routine was run again, in case it was a server error that cut the upgrade process short. The results were the same.  It is possible that many of the members that had not renewed and were not deleted from the roster I used previously (one quarter year grace period).   I am concerned that many of you will be having trouble accessing the members only website pages. Please do not hesitate to contact me for help, webmaster@blacksmith.org.

UPDATE

Well, as is usually the case, technology is only as good as the user… I went back to square one, did everything just a little differently, and voila, there were 272 people upgraded for member area access… all’s well. I am leaving this article up here because the issue of different email addresses comes up quite frequently. Thank you for your patience.


Comments

  1. Thanks to Amy for getting my password straightened out! I’m working on getting a forge up and running/restored and have MANY questions. Think I can figure out how to start a “topic”(?) but don’t understand how to post images to accompany my questions. Not real computer literate and I can’t find instructions on how to navigate the forum area. I’d sure appreciate your help as soon as possible, thanks’
    Randy

  2. Randy, I will post a how to for images, and some other instructions for the forum.
    I will do that today, so look for new forum posts that are about using the forum. Please feel free to ask for assistance any time, my aim is to help you use the forum. ~ amy