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Tuesday, 07 February 2012
New Website Features PDF Print E-mail
Written by Matt Zundel   
Tuesday, 08 September 2009 08:16

New functionality has been added to the DCARC site that deals with your information.  You have the ability to change your profile image, email address, website address, mailing address, city, state, zip, home phone, ARES membership, ARRL membership, call sign, license class, APRS tracker address, and newsletter email address.  You also have the ability to authorize the site to publish some of your information and to see when your club membership will expire.  Another feature added is User Lists.  The last feature I will discuss is the form email.

To access and see what information would be published, click on Your Profile after you login to the site.  You will see two tabs: Contact Info and Ham Radio.  Contact Info shows your login name, your name how you entered it in your profile, a website address (if you entered one), your city, state, and zip.  On the Ham Radio tab, it shows if you are an ARES member, ARRL member, your call sign, license class, and APRS web address.

You can change your information by hovering over Edit and choosing Update Your Profile.  Notice the addition of the Portrait and Membership Status tabs.  Each tab will be explained below.  Once you have finished editing an item, click on the Update button to save your changes.

Portrait tab
The portrait tab is where you can upload a picture of yourself so other can see your smiling face.  You may choose from some generic images or upload your own photo.  If you choose to upload your own photo, make sure the size of the photo is no larger than 2000KB in size.  The photo will automatically be resized, if needed, to 200 pixels wide and 500 pixels high.

Contact Info
Here you can update your display name, email address (for the site and receiving email from the message form -- discussed later in this article), username, password, website address, mailing address, city, state, zip, home phone, and if your information may be published.  Notice the items that have a red dot with a white line through the middle; these items are not published.  The phone number needs to be entered in the format xxx-xxx-xxxx.

Ham Radio
The Ham Radio tab allows you to specify if you are an ARES member and/or an ARRL member.  You can also update your call sign and license class (congratulations if you upgraded!).  If you have an APRS tracker, you can enter the address used to see your location.  For example, if my APRS tracker is sending out the beacon of KD7HHW-2 then I could use www.findu.com/cgi-bin/find.cgi?KD7HHW-2  Feel free to copy this address and then replace the KD7HHW-2 with your tracker ID.

Membership Status
The last tab is Membership Status.  You can see the date we have on record that your club membership will expire and your membership type.  You cannot edit these two fields and are for your information.  If they are incorrect, contact any member of the Member Committee (see the Club Officers page).  The item you can change is the newsletter email address.  We will use this address to send your newsletter.

User Lists allow other users, both guests and registered users to find your information.  Only registered users can see your profile, while guests may be able to see your name, call sign, APRS address, and personal web address.  Registered users may be able to see your profile by viewing the APRS tracker or Member Pages links, even if you have not checked the Publish check box in your profile.  If you do not wish any of your information published, then make sure you do not enter a link in APRS or Website addresses and uncheck the Publish checkmark.  There are 3 User Lists, two of which are viewable by guests.

Club Members
To be on this list, you must be current on your club membership and you must check the box to publish your information.  Only registered users may view this list and see your profile.

APRS Trackers
This is a list of all registered users that have entered an address to track their location.  You do not need to have a club membership to be placed on this list.  This list is viewable by guests but your profile is still only viewable by registered users.

Member Pages
This is a list of all current club members that have entered a website address.  Just like APRS Trackers, anyone can view this list, but only registered users can view your profile.

Form email
If you are a registered user, you have the ability to send an email to another registered user.  To do this, find the user in one of the three lists discussed above and click on their name, which will pull up their profile page.  Hover over Messages and click on Send Email.  From this form, you can fill in your subject line and message.  When sending, your email address will be visible to the recipient so they can reply back.  All email will look like it came from the webmaster but will have a return email address of the correct user.

I hope you enjoy these new features.  I have spent quite a bit of time getting them to work.  I will soon retire the old APRS Trackers and Club Members page.

If you have comments or suggestions about these feature or other features, please let me know.

73,
Matt Zundel
KD7HHW
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Last Updated on Tuesday, 08 September 2009 08:23