Boat Buzz Account Settings vs. Club Web Site Account Setting

[Bill Basler]

A topic mentioned recently in The Brass Bell that warrants being mentioned again here, is that we are designing/programming a new web site that will have fairly extensive "for members only" features. Of course, to offer "for members only" features, we need to put in place an authentication structure to differentiate between members and non-members...and that means a user name and password log in.

Boat Buzz is the first glimpse that you have all had at "logging in" via user name and password. Boat Buzz is built on "open source" software that offers its own authentication scheme. As you log onto Boat Buzz, you are logging onto the discussion forum only, and there has been little reason to extend this log in to other areas of the site as there was really no "for members only" content out there.

But, we have now recently completed the programming of a new PayPal/credit card payment system. This is in place for new members as well as renewals. The first step in renewing your membership online (when the time comes) will be to log on to the payment/renewal form with your user name and password.

As a goal, we wanted to have you all have ONE user name and ONE password for the entire club site, whether you are logging into Boat Buzz, renewing your membership, or exploring contents of the online library (coming soon).

In order to meet that goal, we have had to dissect Boat Buzz, and extract your current user names and passwords out of the Boat Buzz database. We have then copied those user settings over to other areas of the club site to allow you to have access to any club online function via one single user name and password. We have done this and all seems to be in order.

Many of you may have recently recieved an email in regards to "Account Activation." This is basically a computer scripted process that we have put in place to transfer your Boat Buzz user name and passwords to our general club database.

In the near future you will be able to manage your own club profile from one simple page. You will be able to change your email address or phone number. Snowbirds will be able to toggle back and forth between Summer and Winter addresses. You will be able to change your online user name or password. And for those of you who have forgotten your user name or password, you will be able to initiate a reset of same, via a simple web process, rather than waiting for me to respond to you and to reset it for you.

This will all start to converge at some point very soon, and we are really after the most simple, processes to your online experience.