Your account has now been activated and we'd like to take this opportunity to welcome YOU to our community and offer some suggestions on how you can enjoy the benefits and contribute. -- FIRST THING YOU SHOULD DO The very first thing you should do is login with your username and password (and REMEMBER they are case sensitive and space sensitive). When you login, remember to check the box "Remember me", and what that will do is add a cookie to your computer so that you won't need to login again since the system will remember you and put you straight in (BUT you have to ensure you have cookies enabled and allow us through Your firewall). Please also take a note of your username and password, or put this email into a special folder of your email program so you can call it back up. Indeed, you might also print this email out and keep it in a safe place. -- DATE OF BIRTH You will have noticed that we asked for your date of birth when you completed the registration form. This is part of being a child-friendly system and so we are required to identify any person below 14 years of age. This means that if you are below 14 then we require the parents email address so we can ask them for permission to let you use the service. The system will show your birthday but under "Settings" you can elect to hide that information or just display your day and month and in that way it won't reveal your age and you'll be sent a Birthday greeting from us on your birthday! -- CHILDREN We noted that some members, when logged in, allowed their children to play games in our Arcade. We have had some correspondence asking if their children could have their own account so they could save their high scores. Our answer is YES they can! When they complete the date of birth, another screen will come up asking for their parents email address so we can ask for their permission to allow them access. We have also created a "Kids" forum in our "Lifestyle" Group where they can message with each other. We might add - that a recent report suggested that social networking sites should not be blocked by schools or parents as they are now part of everyday communications. Instead they should be used to educate children how to behave themselves in these networks and be aware of security issues. -- MENUS Do explore the various drop down menus as there are a variety of options in there which you might enjoy. For example, there is a Football option which lets you see the rankings of the Scottish and English leagues and the game results. We will always look to add value to the community and if we spot something new and interesting we'll likely try it out. In the event it proves to be successful then it will become a permanent part of our community. In the event it does not prove succesful we will remove it. -- INTERNET EXPLORER ISSUES It seems that members who use IE to play a game in our Arcade finish it, and the score is saved. Then they play another and submit the score they get the message: XXX, you do not have permission to access this page. This could be due to one of several reasons: A couple of members who had this problem switched to firefox and chrome and the score problems have gone away, just seems that IE is still the problem. A couple of other members using IE said their problem were solved after doing the following in IE ... 1. Click "Tools" 2. Then "Internet Options" 3. In the "General" tab under "Browsing history," click "Settings" 4. Select the radio button for "Every time I visit the webpage" If its not set for every time I visit the webpage, set it so it is, and that should fix the problem. At the end of the day if you play the arcade we would suggest using a friendly browser such as Firefox or Chrome until M$ is ready to release IE9. We also note the odd other issue with IE 8 when you are using it on the Windows 7 platform. We have implemented a patch which we hope will resolve these issues. -- MESSAGE FORUMS You should note that Electric Scotland is all about the history of Scotland, the Scots and Scots-Irish. It is equally about the history of the Scots and Scots-Irish that settled all over the world. Our community and forums thus reflect this focus. That said, the Scots are involved in all aspects of life and business much of which has little or nothing to do with things Scottish. And so our forums reflect both our Scottish background and our lifes as they are wherever we are in the world and whatever we are involved in. When it comes to message forums you will see things are arranged in Groups under which you will see the various forums applicable to that Group. Note, that if you decide you are not interested in a Group, you can minimize it to just a single bar so it won't show the list of forums under it. You can always open it up again if you decide to view them at a later date. When you enter a forum you will then see "Threads" and these are simply subjects that are being discussed under that forum. We are more than happy to add other forums and you can leave any suggestions under the "Ask the Seneschal" forum. You will note that we also have an "Electric Scotland Newsletter" forum where we post our weekly newsletter. Each issue has its own thread and so you can comment on it by replying to the thread. You should also note the icon beside the forum which allows you to "subscribe" to the forum. When you click on that you are given the option to get a daily or weekly update. What this does is to send you an email alert letting you know there is a new message for that forum and provides a link to it within the email. Within each email is also a link to unsubscribe. One useful feature we found under the "Celtic Music" forum in our old system was the ability to add a YouTube link to a video within a message. When you viewed the message a video window would come up within the message allowing you to watch it right away. The reason we point this out is that you can use the forum as a kind of database. For example let's say you were a real fan of an artist. You could then create a new "Thread" with the title being the persons name or groups name. You could then add a wee bit of information about that artist or group, add their web site address and then add a link to a YouTube video of them performing. Having done that, others can add messages about them contained with your thread, making it easy to follow up on their work. As you find out about dates and places they will be performing you can add an additional message giving that information and perhaps if anyone reading attends one of their concerts they might share information and pictures from it. This will, perhaps, give you an idea of how the forums can work. First, Groups under which are Forums under which are threads. I might add that we also have the ability to add sub forums and so under "Music" you will find the sub forum "Celtic Music". -- TAPATALK MOBILE APP Tapatalk is a forum app for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and Nokia. The app provides super fast forum access to any of our forums. The free plug-in to activate Tapatalk can be downloaded at http://www.tapatalk.com/ TapaTalk tells us... We received a lot of feedback from users that they want a dedicated app on their smartphone. Most users are contented with the mobile skin or a standard web browser but some of them would appreciate a full-on native app on their phone. For example Tapatalk app allows the user to upload photos directly from their phone to your forums as an image attachment. We are also rolling out Push Notification support so it helps members to stay in touch with your forums while on-the-go. The read-only app is free but if you wish to also send messages then the cost is $2.00. -- MESSAGES When entering new messages into a forum we'd just like you to check that it is the right forum for you to be posting your message in. It is usually best to post your message into the forum that makes most sense for it to be read in. In most Groups you will find a General Message forum where that can be used if there is no other appropriate forum for you to post in. When you signed up you agreed to abide by our terms and conditions, part of which is to be polite and considerate in your messaging. You won't agree with every message that goes up but we should respect other people's opinion. Please also remember that these are public forums and so can and will be read by people of different beliefs and persuasions. Also remember... drink in, wits out... so probably best to refrain from messaging if you've had a few! And always be careful of posting private information in public forums that might compromise your safety and security. The good thing about our community is that the vast majority of people are good people so we generally hope you'll find it a fun and interesting place to be. -- MY PROFILE / SETTINGS We highly recommend that you spend a little time in MY PROFILE and SETTINGS which allow you to do a variety of things to customize your experience in the community. -- NEW MEMBERS To help folk make contacts within the community we have a new members forum. This means that when you join the community a thread will be started with your username in the "New Members" forum. This allows other members to greet you. And when your name is highlighted you can reply to the message and offer any additional information about yourself if you wish. -- THE COMMUNITY Finally, a great community depends on the members of the community to be active and to participate. The more that we all interact in the community - the better it will be for all of us. Do you have any particular skill sets? Might you be a windows guru? If so you might suggest that we create a Windows forum where you could post useful tips and be available to answer any questions. Likewise, if you have a special hobby that you enjoy, you might suggest we create a forum where you can be active in messaging about it. At the end of the day, forums won't get used unless people are active in them. It's very easy for us to add a forum - but it's quite another matter to get it well used. This is where, if you suggest a forum, then it's also part of your responsibility to do your best to get it populated with good information and in this way attract others to visit and participate. As we presume you will be a bit of an expert in the forum topic you might also suggest that friends with the same interest also join up and get involved. At the end of the day, Electric Scotland can but provide the facility - it is then up to the community to build it into a place that people will want to come and hang out. We will continue to improve the community as new facilities become available. -- LINKS We have created a special web links system where you can add links to other web sites. To start it off we have added three Groups... Scottish Links Members Web Sites Resources Wherever you place a link we'd ask that you take time to offer a good description and make use of the entry options to make your entry look attractive. You might consider the formatting options available to you then take time to prepare a good description and come back and fill it out later. Likewise, if you are adding a resource, please tell us why you think this is a good resource. Scottish Links have many categories under it but all are for Scottish based companies and organizations. We also accept International links where they are mostly to do with things Scottish. For example you might be a Scottish Clan Society in America, a St Andrews Society or a Highland Games somewhere in the world or a shop that mainly sells Scottish products. When you enter a link to a Scottish business you also have an option to add a second link under Scottish Council Areas. Our idea for this is if you are going to a particular council area on business or on holiday then you might want to check any resources in that council area. Members Web Sites are of course for you to add your own web site if you have one or a link to a Blog that you publish. We have two sections, one for your personal web site and another for your business site. Resources are simply good web sites anywhere in the world on various topics that you recommend to others. We can add other groups or categories if you feel they would be useful and feel free to suggest such. All links will be manually checked before being approved. You should note if you have added a Scottish link, but we can't identify the site as Scottish, then the link will not be approved. We will normally check the site index page and the contact us page for proof it is a Scottish company. -- ELECTRIC SCOTLAND'S NEWSLETTER Our weekly newsletter has it's own forum in the Electric Scotland Group. Should you wish to get an email alert when a new issue is posted just subscribe to the forum. This means when a new issue is posted you'll get an emaail alert in which you are provided with a clickable link to go to the newsletter. With each email alert you'll also get an unsubscribe link as well. -- WHAT'S NEW FORUM Keep an eye out on this forum as this is where we will announce any new features we add to the community. -- THE TECHNICAL STUFF And finally, this community is here to stay for the long term. We have beta tested the system over the past year and learned a lot from it so what we have learned has been built into this community. We have installed very fast servers with major backup facilities and so should the system crash we can be back up very quickly with almost no loss of data. We will be adding more bandwidth in the future to ensure the system is fast to access. This is an evolving community meaning that improvements will be made when available. Steve May, aka Papa Bear, is our technical expert and is responsible for all the technical work within the community. We hope you will enjoy the community and please tell others about it so we can ramp up the membership and make this a real and active community that we can all enjoy being members of. Kind regards Alastair -------- Alastair McIntyre KCTJ, FSA Scot http://www.electricscotland.com