You might already have noticed that there have been stirrings in the member pages. We’ve shuffled things around so that you can easily access all your personal site details, contributions and settings in one place. The member pod is where it’s always been in the top left-hand corner of the site, but now it works that bit harder for you.

So what’s new?

For a guide to what the different pages do, check out the ‘All My Pages’ link. There are also specific changes that regular site users should be aware of.

Names and nicknames
If you’re a regular site contributor, one of the important changes for you is that you can now give yourself two names: Your real name, which we’ll use when we send out prizes to competition winners etc. (and which you can choose not to appear on the site at all and thus remain incognito), and your site nickname, which appears next to your contributions on the site, for example in the forum, second-hand and review sections.

Your site nickname is unique, so there can be no imposters, but this also means that if you decide to change your nickname you relinquish your old name, and someone else may use it.

NB: (and this is the tricky bit…) to set the new system up, the name you were using before has been set as your nickname you can change this any time you want, though only to a nickname that no-one else is currently using.

If you find you now have a number at the end of your name as it appears on the site, that’s because there are multiple members with the same name as you, and as nicknames have to be unique, we had to add numbers to distinguish them from each other when we copied your name over as your nickname. So if you’re Mike Davis 3 then there were two other Mike Davises who joined before you.

If you take the opportunity to check your real name and address details are correct it will ensure that when you win a prize on the site we don’t post it to someone called ‘Hugh Jarce’ or ‘Eric Shon’ at Rusty Cottage.

My Profile
You can now give a lot more detail on your profile page, and change your member pic here. Several of the profile pages are private pages, and the other pages you can choose to make public, or not. Other members will see a similar page when they click on your site nickname, but without any editing details or any of the pages you have opted not to show.

My Forum
Your forum settings now live here (viewable only by you) as do your latest forum posts and all the threads you have ever started on the site. This makes life easier for you, as well as giving other members an idea of your site involvement.

My Newsletter
It’s now easier than ever to turn your newsletters of and on. If you don’t want to receive any contact at all from us, then make sure you have the right boxes unticked on the ‘My Details’ page (we won’t have changed your settings if you have previously elected not to receive information from us).

The rest of the pages allow you to keep track of your most recent contributions in different site areas, and give other members an idea of how active around the site you are. We’ll be adding more to these pages over time, and slightly polishing these pages (for example including the full review and not just the summary on the ‘My Reviews’ page). In the meantime let us know what you think on the forum.