New member question

[Richard (OldStager)]

Hi , 

 

I wish to purchase a membership for a very good friend as not only is he a fellow petrolhead but he will be the owner of my car one day ( I'm never selling it BTW so .... )

 

Can I create a username myself for him  or does he have to do it?. I have in days gone by set accounts up for folks who were not very tech savvy, but got into trouble for it even though the account was for my sister at the time. So just checking here first before I do. Besides which I don't know how the forum handles IP addresses and since we are 80 miles apart I don't want to mess things up..

 

Cheers 

Richard.

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

In principle, there’s no problem with this. In practice, we see issues arise occasionally, depending just how “un savvy” the third person is!

 

Incidentally on a separate, but slightly related note, members are perfectly legitimately able to transfer their balance of membership over to another person, when selling the car. Most don’t, and like to stay on for a while, but the option is there. (Needs to be done via the Membership Sec for anyone looking to do it.)

 

But back to the question.

 

Physically all that needs to be done is from a machine not logged on to the forum, create a new log on name, using a different email address, and set a password. Once that log on has been created, the new account has a month to upgrade from free trial to a paid member, via the shop tab near the top of the forums main page. And that’s essentially it.

 

Where it gets complicated!

(This is rare, but…) The biggest support issues come when a friend or family member tries to help someone who really doesn’t know what they’re doing, and panics around technology, by not just doing it for them, but doing it from their machine, not the device belonging to the new member they’re trying to help! 
 

So, whether it’s a phone, laptop or tablet, always use their machine, that way, all the cookies that get set when you register will be on the device they’re going to use, and the forum will “recognise” them. (And you can help them by ticking the “remember me” option when logging in to their account.

 

It’s fine to do the actual process for them. But try and talk them through what you’re doing, as you go.

[Richard (OldStager)]

Thanks @Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman, a job for this evening then, Andy is fairly tech savvy but not likely to use the forum much at this stage, I thought it would be a good idea while I'm still here ( not planning on "going anywhere" BTW) and then he has his own access to not only help from everyone on here but can the read my build page to see what I did regarding part XXX or whatever, besides which he likes to know what I am tinkering with when he calls so I can now point him here. What I had planned was ( as you suggested) log out of here, go to the create an account page ( not sure where that is now, but I'll find it) do a username and password , then at this point I have a username to sign up with ( I think its what I did originally ?) once done , I will email him the username and password under the proviso he changes that password immediately ( I don't need to know it) . Then we're done as I see it. If that sounds ok then a job for tonight.

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

If he’s reasonably tech savvy that should be ok.

 

👍