The Moulton Bicycle Club recently entered an exciting new phase with the upgrade of our website, featuring Paypal integration and our online Community.
The following is a brief overview of what has changed, and how it may impact you as a current, future, lapsed or frustrated member.
Club Membership
The website now allows members to join the club and renew their membership online using Paypal. Current Members will be able to update their address details. Another useful feature are Paypal subscriptions, which allow a membership to be automatically renewed each year.
Memberships now run for 1 year from the date on which you join. Previously, all memberships expired on 31st August regardless of the joining date.
These changes should reduce the excessive strain on the Membership Secretary, a position which is voluntary and quite hard work!
Getting Registered
If you had an account on the old members website, these account details will no longer work. Sorry, but this due to technical considerations. You will need to register a new account on this website.
The registration process involves three steps:
1: Register an account
You will be asked for your name, email address, a password (make it a good one) and a unique username. The username should contain no spaces, punctuation or special characters. If your name is Joe Bloggs, then jbloggs or joebloggs would be good usernames.
You will then receive an Activation Email. The activation email will contain a hyperlink, which you will need to click on to activate your account. This verifies that the email address is correct and prevents someone from maliciously using your email address.
If you do not receive the activation email, it may be in your spam folder.
2: Tell us your Membership Number
Ok, so you have now registered, but we may not recognise that you are, or were previously, a member. You have two options:
You can email the webmaster and ask him to do this step for you. The webmaster will link your details to your existing membership details in an instant.
In fact, if you have registered using the email address that you used on the old members site, then the webmaster will probably do this for you automatically!
Alternatively you can select My Account > MBC Membership Details from the Menu at the top of the screen. There are a few things to note:
- Enter your current or old Membership Number (you probably got a letter from the Membership Secretary with a cutout Membership Card containing the number). If you can't remember the number, email the Webmaster, or the Membership Secretary.
- Enter your first and last names. These will need to match exactly those details that were in the Membership database previously. If you used joint names, or use an initial or an an abbreviation in your name, this may get tricky. Don't suffer in silence! Email the webmaster or the Membership Secretary.
3: Renewal Details
So now, if everything has gone ok, you should see your Membership Number and Renewal Date on your MBC Membership Details page (under the My Account menu).
There are a number of possibilities here:
- you had already sent your membership renewal and payment to the Membership Secretary (perhaps by cheque, standing order or he sent you a Paypal request for payment). The renewal date should be in the future, and you should see your full address details on the MBC Membership Details page. Everything is in order, go and enjoy the website!
- you may have sent a payment to the Membership Secretary, but the renewal date shown is in the past. Well, the Membership Secretary has been snowed under with renewals, and these are taking some time to process. So your renewal is probably in a big pile waiting to be processed. If you are concerned, send the Membership Secretary an email. We do apologise for the delay. This, however, is a great reason to renew by Paypal next year.
- your membership expired in September 2011, or any year in the past for that matter. No problem at all! You can use the Paypal buttons to bring your membership bang up to date.
New Members
If you have never been a member, then joining the club is a simple 3 step process.
1: Go to the Paypal page and make the relevant payment.
2: Register an account (if you have not done this already)
3: Fill in your address details and get your membership number. Welcome to the Club!
Lapsed Members
As outlined above, you can simply register, enter your old Membership Number and renew using Paypal.
The Community
The Community brings the world of social media to Moultoneering.
Members can update their profile, add friends and interact privately or publicly. Members can join Groups. There is a group limited to MBC Members, and an Open group. Members can ask to create their own groups, for example based on location (city, country, etc) or based on Special Interest.
Groups can be Public (anyone can join), Private (anyone can view but participation is by invitation only), Hidden (only members of the group can see the group). We can also limit groups to current MBC Members, or leave them open to everyone.
Getting in contact
The Membership Secretary can be contacted at mbc.membership.secretary@gmail.com.
The Webmaster can be contacted at webmaster@moultonbuzz.com