Below

1. Gaining access to your forum account

2. Signing up for NNTP

3. Signing up for Email

4. Posting with HTML

5. Digests



Gaining access to your forum account 



Overview: It's a handshake method! Click on reset password and provide an email address to reset, then get mail there with a URL. Click on that to do the reset which sends you another piece of email. The second piece of email has a new temporary password that gets you in. At which point, please reset your password to something you prefer.



Step-by-step:



1. When you get to the login window, it wants your login and password. But click on "Forgot password" and you'll get a page that wants your email address. Put in an e-mail address, click "Reset Password" and it will tell you that you should get an email soon.



First mistake: make sure you get the right email. I have several, and I thought I was using another one -- no message came. Then I thought to check that I was using the right one. Tried that address, and pow! A reset message!



2. The FIRST "Reset Password" message has a URL in it for you to click. Go ahead, this will get you a message with the real reset password.



Second mistake: I tried opening the URL in a new window (right-click) and it gave me the login window. Where I couldn't figure out what to do. I didn't realize that I needed another piece of mail! Just clicking on the "Reset Password" URL did bring up a page explaining that I should get the next mail real soon, but...



3. The SECOND "Reset Password" message has the login AND a new temporary password. NOW go to the login window (any of them) and try the login name and new password. Poof! You're in.



4. Before you forget, click on Control Panel->Account Settings. Put in the new password (from your email) and click "change password". You'll get a little form that wants your current password (from the email, again), then your new password AND confirm it by typing it in again.



Incidentally, at least for me, somewhere in that process Firefox asked me if I wanted to save the password, I said yes, and it happily saved something. BUT when I went to login again, it wasn't the right one. So I fixed the password, and Firefox asked again. NOW we've got the right one saved.



Signing up for NNTP Posting:



1. Grab a newsreader program (I use Thunderbird for NNTP but there are a variety of newsreaders out there).



2. In your newsreader program add baensbar.net as your news server.



3. You will be prompted for a username/password. If you changed your password as specified in step 4 of gaining access to your forum account then your username/password should be the same as your web username/password. Your NNTP password will be unusable until you change your password via the web interface.



4. Once you have a working username/password simply plug those into your newsreader and you should have the ability to read and post via NNTP. All posts via NNTP will be mirrored in email as well on as on the web.



Signing up for Email posting:



1. There are a couple of ways to do this. The first is to go to the web forum and click on the link labeled Sign Up For Email Posting. This link will allow you to subscribe to individual forums for e-mail posting. Just follow the instructions that you see on the resulting page.



2. You can also subscribe via e-mail by sending an e-mail to subscribe-LISTNAME@bar.baen.com where LISTNAME is the mailing list you wish to subscribe to. I will supply a link that will allow you to subscribe to all mailing lists via one e-mail.



3. An important note is that you will need to be confirmed by the mailing list administrator before you are allowed to receive or send e-mail posts. This is to prevent bots/spammers/non-forum users from joining the mailing lists.



Posting in HTML:



1. All forums currently have HTML enabled by default and all posts will be processed using html. However, if you are planning to use HTML in your post you should select the Use HTML checkbox below your post. If you don't click the use HTML button pre tags will be placed around your post which will lead to extra spacing and possibly altering of your font.



Digests:



1. If you wish to get attachments in Digests then you will log into your user options page and select MIME digests instead of plain text. The options page for each list can be found at bar.baen.com/cgi-bin/mailman/options/LISTNAME where LISTNAME is the name of the list you wish to alter.