Website Update

The Board of Directors of the OISC is constantly trying to provide you, our members with the very best services, training, coaching and information resources possible. As part of this effort, on April 24, 2006 we launched a fabulous new website that brings with it a wide range of new tools and capabilities. Over the coming months we look forward to your feedback and suggestions as we continue to enhance and improve the site.

Please note that this site is the result of many hundreds of hours of work by a volunteer web team headed up by Michael Garvin. While the team has worked relentlessly to create this exceptional product, Mike himself deserves a huge thank you from all of us, as he has single-handedly been the key driver of this major undertaking.

Steve MacDonald
OISC President

A Quick Overview

This document will teach you the basics of what you must do in order to take full advantage of all the new website tools and features. Please read this carefully and get started immediately so that you will have all important club communication at your fingertips.

Some of the features of our new website include:

• Improved navigation and usability
• Dynamic calendars and activity schedules
• Easy to use photo galleries
• User-managed member profiles for registration and updating
• E-commerce capabilities for registration, events and merchandise
• Robust discussion groups and member communications tools
• Private members only content and access to valuable content
• Private members communications and photo galleries
• A mileage club to track and log training miles
• Personal training log capabilities

Getting Started

There are many tools and features that you will discover and enjoy over time, but there are three critical features that you need to be immediately aware of to take full advantage of the site¢s functionality.

1. Registration You must create your own unique profile and user ID (VERY IMPORTANT!!) [more...]
2. Calendars These will ensure that you know about all the club events as well as when and where they are happening (explain whether they need to do anything here, or whether they are simply available to them after they create a profile) [more...]
3. Discussion Group and Communications Forums These areas provide an opportunity for all members to share topics of interest related to inline skating and club activities. [more...]

Step 1: Get Registered NOW!

To use the new features of our web site including the discussion groups, you must register with our new web site. This is a separate activity from the registration you may have completed on paper or in person. Next year our site will be active before the season is launched and registering twice will not be required.

To register with our new web site follow these steps:

1. Open your Internet browser and go to the URL: http://www.inlineottawa.com
2. From the main menu on the left, hold your mouse over Join, then in the sub-menu, select Register (Free).
3. You will be presented with a registration form, fill it out and click on the Register! button. There is no cost associated with this and you will not be automatically charged in any way.
4. After registering, you will be immediately sent an activation email. Open your email inbox, and watch for an ACTIVATION email. When you receive it, open it and click on the activation link. This will open the club website within your Internet browser and automatically complete your registration.

Activation is required for all member accounts to ensure that we have a working email address and to reduce unwanted automatic signups via spam agents. Next season you will not need to register again. Your data will be saved in our internal database and will only be visible to you. For your security passwords are encrypted and when requesting a forgotten password your birth date will be used as a security question. Forgotten passwords will only be sent to the email address you have previously registered with us.

The user id and password you create during registration in step 3 above, is the user id and password that you will use throughout the club site (including My Membership, Training Log and the Mileage Club). This same user id and password is also used to login to the Discussion Group area.

Step 2: Explore the Calendar and Event Schedule Tool

To get started with our online calendar, follow these steps:

1. Open your Internet browser and go to the URL: http://www.inlineottawa.com
2. Hold your mouse over the Calendar entry in the main menu on the left, and select the Upcoming Events entry from the sub-menu.
3. You will be presented with a screen showing links to the events by the upcoming week, and the upcoming month. Click on an event link for more details.

To browse the entire calendar, follow these steps:

1. Open your Internet browser and go to the URL: http://www.inlineottawa.com
2. Hold your mouse over the Calendar entry in the main menu on the left, and select the Club Calendar entry from the sub-menu.
3. You will be presented with a traditional calendar. Hold your mouse over the event titles to see a popup with more details. You can also click on the event titles to see the same details.
4. You may randomly select days from the previous/next month by clicking on the day number in the previous/next month displays at the top.
5. You can display the entire previous/next month by clicking on the month (in red) at the top.

To search for an event, select Search below the monthly calendar. You will be presented with a keyword input field and a Search button, enter your keyword(s) and click the Search button. You will then be provided with a list of links to the events that match your keyword.

NOTE: the formatting in the calendar has a known bug where links show up in black and do not look like links!-but they are. To be sure, hold your mouse over the text in question. If your cursor changes to a hand from an arrow, then it is definitely a link.

Step 3: Explore the Discussion Forum and Select your Preferences

In 2006 the OISC is moving away from the Yahoo based discussion group, towards one that is integrated directly within our web site. Among the many features of the new discussion group:

• Better security
• Far superior spam protection
• Message formatting, including the ability to use HTML and URL linking
• Unlimited forums (sub discussion groups) of our own choosing
• Powerful posting search tools
• Support for conducting Polls
• Optional email notification of replies to your topic
• Avatars (personal graphic icons to identify you)
• An Email based private messaging system
• Strong topic moderation support

Rather than having one discussion group, the new discussion group is actually a "community" or a collection of discussion forums. Each forum is based on a discussion in a particular area. This allows you to focus on far fewer posts and topics. Instead of being presented with everything, you need only focus on the particular kind of posts you are interested in.

The new discussion group has the following forums:

• Announcements
• General Discussions
• Mileage Club & Recreational Skates
• Equipment (Buying/Selling/Recommendations)
• Nutritional Information
• Training ∓ Conditioning
• Car Pooling

You will be able to post your comments and questions in any of these forums and be able to track the topic without having to filter through content from the other forums.

In addition to these forums, the new discussion group area includes additional forums which are related to special events and very specific topic areas:

• Registration
• Training Sessions
• Annual General Meeting
• Inline Festival
• NCM
• Sunday Bike Days
• Races
• Training Camps

Getting Started

To start using the new discussion group you will need to register (online) with our new web site. If you have already paid for a membership, you do not have to buy a membership to use features such as the mileage club or discussion group. If you have not registered with our new web site yet, then follow this procedure:

1. Go to our new site (www.inlineottawa.com)
2. From the main menu on the left, select Join > Register (Free). You can also select Join > Discussion Group but this is a short cut intended ONLY for people who will not be actually skating with the club.
3. Complete the registration form and submit it online by clicking the Register! button.
4. You will receive an activation email that verifies that your email address is correct. Click on the activation link included in the email. Your web browser will come up with a confirmation message.
5. You are now registered with our new site!

The user id and password that you created during registration can now be used everywhere on our site, including the discussion forum.

To login to our web site use the login entry area at the top of each page. If you are in the discussion group area use the Log In link in the upper right hand corner just above the discussion group forums list.

Viewing Topics

When you post a message you are actually creating a topic for discussion. Topics can be replied to or edited (moderated) and each forum can contain any number of topics. You also have the ability to be notified by email when there are replies to a topic. To view the topics currently active in a forum, follow this procedure:

1. Go to our new site (www.inlineottawa.com)
2. From the main menu on the left, select Discussion Group Forum.
3. You will now see the main discussion group area, with the topic forums listed, Announcements, General Discussions etc.
4. Click on the name of the forum you wish to browse (the forum names are links to the forums). You will now see the list of topics for the selected forum.
5. To view the posts associated with a topic, click on the topic name. You will now see all of the posts for that topic.
6. If you want to go back to the forum, use the Back to Top link in the lower left hand corner of the post, or select a another forum or site destination in the Jump To drop down menu at the bottom of the page.

While viewing topics is useful, you will likely want to post replies to topics as well. This is discussed in the following section.

Posting Replies

To post replies to topics, make sure that you are registered (see the Getting Started section), and also make sure you can navigate to the topic you want to reply to (see the Viewing Topics section above).

To post a reply to a topic, follow this procedure:

1. Select the topic you are interested in (see Viewing Topics above)
2. Click on the NewTopic or PostReply buttons. NewTopic will create a completely new topic (a.k.a. discussion thread)
3. You will now see a ´Post Reply¡ or ´New Topic¡ Page. These allow you to fill in or modify the title and the body of the post. You can also select various kinds of text formatting and emoticons. Enter your post with the formatting you prefer.
4. Click on the Preview button if you wish to see what it will look like before actually sending it.
5. When you are sure you wish to send the post, click the Submit button. Your post will be sent to the forum, and the topic counter will be modified. You will see a confirmation page that indicates the posting was made and links to go back to the forum or the main index of all discussion forums.

There are more features of the new discussion group on our web site, but these basic procedures should allow you to initially view and reply to topics quickly and easily.

Discussion Group Preferences

Once you are comfortable replying to topics you may wish to change some of your discussion groups preferences such as your time zone, graphic avatar, or make public your ICQ/MSN/Yahoo id. All of these things can be managed by clicking on the Profile link at the top of the Discussion Group pages. If you are not already logged in, you will be required to login.

From the Profile page you can change all of your posting preferences and even upload an avatar if you wish to use one.

Note however that you will not be allowed to change your password or email through this page. This is by design. You must change these items through your main profile on our new website. Select My Membership from the main menu on the left hand side of our new web site. The reason for this is that we have strived to have one consistent userid/email/password everywhere on our site.

Questions?

Our integrated discussion group is based on the PHPBB OpenSource software project. You can get further help on the specifics of the forum conventions by clicking on the FAQ link at the top of the discussion group pages. For more detailed technical information, visit the PHPBB website at:

http://www.phpbb.com/support/

You can also ask us for help, by emailing our club Web Master at:

webmaster@inlineottawa.com