On occasion, newcomers may have a problem with posting new posts once they've completed the registration process by e-mail. The following information has been provided to help you in this regard.

The wordings of the sample e-mails below (in quotes) have since been tweaked for clarity. Text will vary, but the meaning is essentially the same.

1. Registration - Did you respond to our automatic e-mail?

When you first registered your user account, you will have received an automatic response that verifies your e-mail address. If you didn't respond to this e-mail, your account would sit in a limbo state and you would not be able to post anything. If you've responded to this e-mail, skip this step. If you don't recall seeing this e-mail, check your "Spam" folder just in case.

That e-mail would have looked like this:

Subject: ACTION REQUIRED to Activate Membership for Sword Forum International

Dear John Smith,

* PLEASE READ - This is IMPORTANT *

1. YOU MUST COMPLETE THIS LAST STEP TO ACTIVATE YOUR ACCOUNT!
2. Approval is a MANUAL process by our admins. If you attempted to register a nickname instead of a real name, your user ID will get deleted. Ask us to RENAME it for you.
3. APPROVAL IS NOT AUTOMATIC. It takes 24-96 hours for approval.

Thank you for registering at the Sword Forum International. Before we can activate your account one last step must be taken to complete your registration.

Please note - you must complete this last step to become a registered member. You will only need to visit this url once to activate your account.

To complete your registration, please visit this url:
http://forums.swordforum.com/registe...##&i=#########

<a href="http://forums.swordforum.com/register.php?a=act&u=#####1&i=#####">America Online Users Please Visit Here to be Activated</a>

**** Does The Above URL Not Work? ****
If the above url does not work, please use your Web browser to go to:
http://forums.swordforum.com/register.php?a=ver

Please be sure not to add extra spaces. You will need to type in your username and activation number on the page that appears when you visit the url.

Your Username is: John Smith
Your Activation ID is: ########

If you are still having problems signing up please contact a member of our support staff at sfiadmin@swordforum.com

All the best,
Sword Forum International
2. Has your account been approved?

If you've received the following e-mail verification, skip ahead to the Step 4.

Subject: Account validated at Sword Forum International!

Dear John Smith,

We have now activated your account at the Sword Forum International. The forums can be found here:

http://forums.swordforum.com/index.php

Your login details are as follows:
Username: John Smith
Password: as you entered it when you registered

Don't forget that your password is case sensitive.

To edit your profile, please visit this page:
http://forums.swordforum.com/profile.php?do=editprofile

All the best,
Sword Forum International
3. Was your account deleted?

If your account was deleted, it was because you used a nickname or you specified something that didn't look like a proper Firstname Surname format (Capitalizing First Letters Helps). Thus you would have seen the following e-mail. Also, check your "Spam" e-mail folder. If you received this, please re-register.

Subject: Account removed at Sword Forum International!

Dear Ninja2003,

Unfortunately your registration at Sword Forum International did not meet our membership requirements. Therefore your registration was deleted.

We process registrations by hand, so there could have been a mistake on either part. Just to make sure, please consider that one of the following was our reason for deleting your user account:

* You may have used a nickname. Our Rules specify that your user account must be a real name. If it's a nickname or LOOKS like a nickname, we'll delete it. (e.g. it must be in the format of "FirstName LastName" and any one can be abbreviated but not both. Valid examples are "John S.", "J. Smith" and "John Smith". Invalid examples are "John", " John322", "NinjaDethLord2008", etc.) We do not allow nicknames whatsoever.

* You may have used all lower-case characters in which case we were unable to make out a FIRST NAME and a LAST NAME. With certain countries it is difficult making out certain spellings. If this is the case, then our apologies. Please re-register but use a different format, e.g. "JDvorak" instead of "jdvorak"

* In some cases, some people use false Japanese names even though they are Caucasian. We prefer that our users go by their legal names of birth.

* Your user account was determined to be a spammer trying to promote an improper service.

We invite you to try registering again at http://swordforum.com/ provided that you are in full agreement with the rules. Please do not click "I AGREE" to our rules if you do not mean to follow them.

Sincerely,


Sword Forum International
http://swordforum.com/
4. Check your Web Browser version

At this Step, you've successfully completed registration. The system appears to allow you to log in, but you can't post new posts or reply to anything.

Let's check your browser make and version. With each browser, you should be able to click "Help" and then "About..."

If you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer: Click "Help" and "About Internet Explorer." If it says "Version: 6.02...", etc. then this is an early version, and we suggest upgrading to IE version 7 on www.microsoft.com. There is liklihood you set your security settings too high, or your firewall needs to be amended with an exception to "swordforum.com" but you'll have to consult your technical support accordingly.

The most pain free and easy way to resolve this is to download the free Firefox web browser at www.firefox.com

About 96.2% of people who have had login problems pertaining to browser setting misconfiguration find their problem solved by doing so!

To verify your browser security on Microsoft Internet Explorer, click "Tools" then "Internet Options." With version 6.0x the "Internet Options" window has several tabs on the top.

Click "Privacy". If you have it to either "Block All Cookies" or "High" or "Medium High" your Setting may be interfering with the forums, as the forums need cookies to keep track of your logged-on state (only logged-on people can post and reply). This is your choice and your responsibility alone whether or not you want to change it to "Medium."


5. FireFox browser tweaks

Some people increase the security settings on their Firefox browsers. If this is your case, you will have to add swordforum.com to your exceptions list. Click "Tools" and "Options."

On the page under the "Privacy" tab, click on the "Exceptions" button.

In the text field entitled "Address of web site" type "swordforum.com" and click the "Allow" button.