Having trouble registering or logging in?

If you're reading this, you're probably pretty frustrated with us, but we appreciate that you're giving us another chance! If what follows doesn't help, please don't hesitate to call Michael Odza, Web Publisher, at 505-995-3822, or e-mail him modza@sfnewmexican.com to call you, if it's long distance. He will take as much time as necessary to make sure you can read everything on the site. But here are a few common problems and solutions to try, if you're willing:

Please accept my apologies for the frustration you must be feeling. You can call me between 9 and 6 Monday through Friday (or with an email first, at other times), if you like--I'm happy to walk you through the process and see what's going wrong. Otherwise, here are the most common possibilities:

A. You aren't really registered.
B. You did register successfully, but you're still getting the login page presented to you. There's a glitch in the blue-green login form and process.
C. You did everything right, you may even have been logged in before, but now you're getting a white screen, or a server error.

A. To register:

1. If you registered on our site in the past (before June 1, 2004), you have to register again. The systems were just too incompatible to work together.

2. One of the places to start the registration process includes a clue to where you are in the process. If you look just under the FreeNewMexican logo, you'll see three links, in white letters on blue: Contact Us | Register/Login | Site Map. When you've registered successfully, the third link will change to two new links: My Account | Log Out -- which means you're logged in!

So click on the word Register. A new page should come up with a blue-green box at the upper right. Ignore that box for the moment!

Only computer geeks know the difference between registration and logging in. We offer two paths to create an account with us, under the heading "One-time Registration--" one for people who have a print subscription to The New Mexican delivered or mailed to you, and for people who just want to read the free Web site (not the same.) You fill this out one time, and then you're either always logged in, or you can just log in quickly with your email address and password. Logging in means identifying yourself to our computer server, so that it can match you against the registration information you provided.

3. In filling out the registration form, you have to answer all the questions. Note: Remember to include the "dot com" or whatever extension at the end of your email address.

Only people who do have print subscriptions need to give address and phone numbers, which we then match against our subscriber database.

4. Make sure your password is long enough (six characters) and doesn't have any spaces. Enter the year of your birth, and not your age. (Yes, people have been stymied by that error. A cute message comes up if you do that and submit, but it might be too cute, and is often ignored.)

5. If you click Submit and are returned to the same page, scroll down all the way to see any error messages, in red. The reminder about six letters in your password is always there, so keep looking. If you do have to resubmit, remember to fill in your password again. It's erased after each attempt.

6. After you've clicked Submit, wait! You should get an intermediate, mostly blank page that says "Logging in." And then you should be returned to the home page--with one subtle but crucial difference: that third link under the logo should now say >b>My Account | Log out. At this point you should be able to read any story on the site!

7. What if the registration form keeps returning, blanking out what you've already typed? That's probably because you're using the "Enter" or return key on your keyboard to move from field to field. Most Web pages assume that pressing the "Enter" key means submitting the entire form, not just completing that particular field. Use the Tab key to move from field to field.

8. Let's say you did complete the registration form, but you're still being barred from reading stories. Here's where a phone call can be helpful, but here are the top two or three problems:

1. There's a typo in your email or your password (or both). Sometimes if the "remember me" button was clicked but you "mistypd" (for example), you might not notice it, but the system will tell you there's no account with that combination of email and password. To check this possibility, erase what automatically fills in there, and retype very carefully.

Once again, the link at the top will change when the page reappears, to say Log Out, when you're logged in.

2. You have security or privacy software or settings in your browser that are too strict, and are erasing cookies as fast as the system sets them. Some cookies are benign, so you should accept them. I can tell you how to check your Privacy Settings in Internet Explorer (under Tools/Internet Options), or cookie management in Netscape (under Edit/Preferences).

There could well be some other glitch, but with only two or three exceptions, all the people I've talked to had one of these problems, and were successful in the end.

C. White screens or "page cannot be found" or other error messages are the result of the number of people visiting our site at one time overwhelming our servers. Sometimes this happens in the middle of something you're doing--like registering. You hit the Submit button, and you get a blank screen. Well, we're trying to keep up with the growth, and hope to do a major upgrade in January.

Again, my apologies, and please know we are working through the list above to make the changes necessary--and if there are major bugs, we will get them!

Yours,
Michael

Michael Odza
Web Publisher

505-995-3822
cell: 505-470-4917
fax: 505-986-3067