As of this evening, the new forum has been made live. You can get there by clicking on the “Forum” link in the header navigation of the site. As mentioned in a previous post, the old forum could not be salvaged when we moved to the new hosting provider. That being said, you’ll need to register to use the new forum. Here are the steps:
- Navigate to the Forum page
- Find the “Register” link on the right side of the screen (it can be found under the login section of the screen)
- The registration page requires you enter a USERNAME and an EMAIL ADDRESS (please be sure you read the fields and enter the correct information, you are NOT entering a password during this step)
- The next screen should show you a message stating that an email was sent to the address you entered
- Go to the inbox for the email address you entered and find the message (should come from “WordPress”, I believe…check your junk folder if you don’t see it within a minute or so, it shouldn’t take long to show up)
- Click on the link in the email
- You’ll be brought back to the site on a login screen with your defaulted password highlighted
- Change your password to whatever you want it to be (you can ignore messages about it being “weak”, the system shouldn’t stop you from moving forward)
- After submitting your new password, you should be logged into the forum (you’ll see a black banner at the very top of the screen that should say “Howdy, <your username>”)
If you run into issues while using the steps above, please reach out to me and I’ll do my best to help you get set up.
You’ll notice that the forum looks different than the old one and there’s quite a bit of functionality that’s missing from what we had previously. This includes posting images or files. We’re working on that and will keep you posted when we’re able to get those features working properly.
Other notes of interest:
- If you hover over your username in the black banner at the top, you can select “Edit your profile”. From there you can change your color scheme, update your email address, change your profile image, change your “Nickname”, select what name shows on your posts, etc.
- If you ever forget your password, you can use the “Forgot Password” link on the Forum home page…you’ll be asked to enter your email address
- All posts on the site have the ability to post comments on them…if you’re logged into the forum, your posts will show up right away on the site. If you’re not logged in, the comment will need to be approved before it shows up
Again, this is a very basic install of the new forum and there’s still some work to do. Please feel free to provide constructive feedback and ideas in the forum itself, via email to a board member, or whatever method you are most comfortable using. We’re learning to use this and coming up with changes we’d like to see sooner than later, so weigh in if you have any thoughts.
Finally, I’ll update this post if I receive any feedback about mistakes in the steps I provided or other notes worth sharing.
Thank you all again for your patience!