Membership

[SamHeatherandgirls]

Just got our new to us 2004 TM 3023. I signed up for a guest membership this past Sunday, but am still awaiting confirmation email. I emailed the webmaster email address to no avail. Any tips?

[Bill]

Welcome aboard! In these days of instant gratification, the TM forum is kind of an anachronism. The new member process normally takes about a week. There are two reasons for this. First, Chris handles all applications manually - nothing is automated. You have to realize that this forum is like a hobby for him. He has a very busy job and life and young family, and so it is easy for his "real life" to intrude on his forum activities. I'm sure we all understand that.

The second reason is that as you know, this forum is ad-free and spam-free. Because it offers full membership for free for 30 days, a lot of spammers sign up and try to dump a load on us. The one week delay enables the forum membership software to make a number of validity checks on new signups - things like black-list checking. It also allows us (primarily me) to make a number of manual checks if anything looks fishy.

This system seems to work well. We have virtually no spam and no ads. But the cost of that freedom is the delay in activating new accounts. If the delay goes out to a week and you haven't heard about your application, by all means query Chris. But membership within a few hours? Probably not gonna happen. For now I can only advocate patience.

Bill

[SamHeatherandgirls]

Thanks Bill,
I didn't realize exactly what was going on behind the scenes. I'm planning on sending in the $12 to become a member once I get the approval, but for now I'm trying to learn as much as possible about our TM.

-Sam

[klpauba]

You have my approval! :)

[SCBillandJane]

Help?!? We renewed our membership via PayPal and it showed up on our credit card statement as paid November 24 ( two weeks ago). We still only have access to the part of the TM forum available to guests and/or trial members. Just wanted to see if this is normal. (I know Chris stays very busy and does the site management on his own time.) We hope he is OK and just out spending well-deserved time camping or something else almost as fun. So . . . just checking in!

[SCBillandJane]

As of this morning, we have full access to the forum again. Thanks, Chris!

[Lindaloo58]

I renewed my membership on June 12th through PayPal and still can't get access to everything. Can someone help fix this for me?

[Bill]

Linda -

Send a PM to Chris. Include your real name, forum username, payal name, date paid, amount paid - in other words, everything he will need to identify you and track down the transaction.

I will send a separate PM to remind him.

Bill