Blandford Forum Camera Club

Malcolm, who every week produces a timely, lucid and entertaining report for us was bold enough, after making some suggestions as to how the print appreciation evenings might be varied, to comment as follows:

‘It would be very interesting to hear what others think, so please do use the facility to post a contribution for all to see’.

So far the silence has been deep and totally black, with no detail at all.
Why would this be?
Didn’t anybody read it……?
Perhaps you did read it and:
i) Intended to respond but just haven’t found the time yet.
ii) Intended to respond but was a bit nervous.
iii) Would like to respond but don’t know how to get a comment onto the site.
iv) You are shy.
v) You are new to the club and are a bit hesitant about saying what you think.

If any of the above speculation is near to hitting the mark, the following might help.
For those of you who would like to express an opinion and don’t know how to post a comment, I have repeated what you need to know at the end of these notes. If you are still not sure, or have a problem, just email your views to Malcolm or me and we will put them up for you.
If you are not too confident about expressing yourself in writing and not sure whether what you have written is grammatical, don’t worry, Malcolm or I will be pleased to tidy it up. And don’t worry about making a fool of yourself, I do it all the time and it doesn’t hurt too much after a while.

One other thing, those new to the club and the web site, did you know that there are year’s worth of reports and notes in the archive that you can go back to and read, a lot of it is quite interesting. Just go to the bottom of the home page and click ‘older posts’; this will allow you to go back page by page until you get tired or fall asleep.

Posting a comment to the web site:
There is control over entry to the site to avoid spam and malicious content. This is done by allowing access only to those registered and provided with a password. The mechanism for this in the past was by encouraging members to provide profiles and a portrait. This has not been popular. The other way of becoming registered is simply to allocate the status of ‘subscriber’ plus the provision of a password to members who request it. To become a subscriber you only have to ask (but you do need to ask!).
The subsequent entry of your user name and the password gives access to the comment box at the end of each article. It does not give access to the management of the site and the ability to initiate article, edit and delete etc.
In summary then:
If you wish to be able to comment, ask me (by email) to register you as a subscriber.
If you wish to contribute an article or any other input to the site, send it as a word document to Malcolm Bowditch or me.
How to make a comment if you are registered as a subscriber:
Go to the home page and the Login for member’s panel on the right hand side and left click login.
Alternatively: Go to the home page, open the article you wish to comment on and, at the bottom of the article, where it says Leave a Reply, left click on the logged in link in the line of text (You must be logged in to post a comment.)
You then get the login panel where you enter your user name (exactly as it was given to you) and password, left click login. (If you click the remember me box you will not have to enter your password every time.
This returns you to the home page and the article you selected for comment. At the bottom of the article is a box for your comment. Type it in and left click submit comment. Job done! Before your comment is made live on the site it has to be initiated by the moderator (me).
If you intend commenting in the future, I suggest you copy the bit of text above and save it somewhere you can refer to when you forget (as I frequently do….)
I am afraid that is as simple as I can make it.
Note. Any email sent to the club is automatically routed to my in box.

Keith Chaloner