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23 February 2014

Welcome to New Members and Site Information

February 2014

Dear MirandaNetters

It seems an age since we last sent out a Newsletter, so I thought I would take this opportunity to give you an update on membership details and on MirandaLink.

New Members

First of all, warm greetings to the many new members who have joined since we last sent out a Newsletter. They are a very varied and interesting group of people from all corners of the globe, and their profile statements are worth reading, as indeed are all our profile statements!

I am aware though from changing email addresses that many members have changed their employment or their work place since joining, so this might be a good time to remind you how to update your profile. You might be surprised how well MirandaNet is indexed by Google and other search engines, so an up-to-date profile can be an excellent way of promoting yourself!

Logging in

First of all you will need to log in. Find the Members log in link in the footer of every page of MirandaNet:

You will need your username and your password.

Your username is usually just your name without accents, capital letters or spaces, e.g. joebloggs, unless you chose something different when joining.

Your password is known only to you, but the log in page can send a username reminder to the email address you have used on the site (that will be the address that is receiving this newsletter!) and you can then use your username to request a password reminder. If you are really stuck, there is a link for getting in touch with me and I will reset your password for you, and even your email address if it is no longer valid.

Once you have logged on you will be presented with a range of possibilities.

Profiles

Edit your profile if you want to change your password or your email address.

Take the opportunity to update your profile! It is a public document, so why not use it to show off!

Don't forget to save any changes.

MirandaLink

Back on the logged in page you will see a note saying whether or not you receive MirandaLink. Can I recommend any member who has opted out of MirandaLink to reconsider? There have been several cracking good debates on MirandaLink recently, and for many members this is the main reason for joining. There is a tick box in the Edit Profile routine for receiving or declining MirandaLink. If you re-join, you might need to wait until I confirm your membership of MirandaLink, as it is a moderated list with many built-in protocols to reduce the danger of spam to a minimum.

You can change your MirandaLink settings so that you only receive a digest of the debate, or you can opt out for a short while. You can also explore the archive of all the debates, though I find it easier to follow them as they happen.

Case Studies

I have now integrated the case studies routine with the membership routine (some members might remember the old eJournals where this was held originally) and if you submitted a case study in the past, you can now edit it if you like, and all members can add a new case study.

There is a routine for uploading files or images into your own 'personal' folder on the site and then linking these to your case study or even your profile if you work out how the linking is done!

This areas is comparatively new, so I would welcome feedback on any problems that you might encounter. I'm also planning to add a similar routine for 'Reports' to complement the case study section.

There is a searchable list of all the case studies (www.mirandanet.ac.uk/casestudies), and you might like to look at a fascinating item which was recently uploaded by a brand-new MirandaNetterChristian Smith:

Membership List

Our membership list can be displayed in a number of ways, and is also searchable. And if you are logged in, you can also see the members' email addresses. I am always interested in feedback on any aspect of how this data is displayed, and can add new features if requested.

Security

People sometimes ask me what their password is, but the passwords are encrypted and so I don't know, and can only find out by devious means which I have no intention of using! You can only get your password by requesting a reminder, but I can reset it if you should request this. One further point on security: I am occasionally asked if a username can be changed, and the answer is 'of course', but for security reasons it has to be done by me, not by the user. The security of your data is at the centre of all I do with the site, and I welcome any comments or queries on this topic as well. I would however like to emphasise that we do not employ 'bank strength' security on the site, and indeed the Mailman (MirandaLink) routines all work on plain text passwords, which is not ideal but is how that part of the system works, so I would urge you never to use an 'important' password on MirandaNet such as the one you use for your on-line banking or even your email account. We have never had a case of stolen identity on the site, and I will do all I can to keep it that way!

Best wishes to you all.

Francis Howlett

MirandaNet Editor

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