HyperNews: Instructions: Membership

HyperNews Membership

Becoming a "member" of a HyperNews site provides you with a UserID that you use to identify yourself to the site later. HyperNews also remembers other information that you provide, such as your name and email address. Membership may also allow you to perform actions restricted to members only; these restrictions vary from site to site depending on how the administrator has configured HyperNews. You may be required to become a member in order to write messages, for example. To find out what the restrictions are, visit the membership form at that site. But sometimes, even membership is restricted; in that case, there might be a way to contact an administrator to request membership.

Note that "registering" or "joining" as a member is very different from "subscribing". You might be able to subscribe (and get email) without being a member, and you are not subscribed to anything just because you are a member. See the instructions on subscribing for details. Nevertheless, recent versions of HyperNews now have an 'all-member' forum option that automatically subscribes all members to particular forums.

Also note that each site has it own members. So registering at hypernews.org does not mean you are a member at any other HyperNews site.

Becoming a Member

To become a member of a HyperNews site, first click on the

button on any page at that site. With HyperNews version 1.9.7, this results in a list of current members; you can select members to view information about them. Also on this page is a button that says: "Register (Become a Member)". Click on it.

The membership information includes the following:

User ID (e.g. joe)
Email Address (e.g. joe@home.net).
Email and subscription options.
Password (8 character maximum)
Name (e.g. Joe User)
Personal URL - your home page.
Other optional Biographical Data, which may be different for each HyperNews site.

User ID

When you are first registering, you must select a User ID. This is an identifier that will be associated with all the personal information that you provide. Your User ID can be the same as your Email address, or you can use a shorter nickname if it is available. A nickname must have no spaces in it. You can choose a nickname for your User ID at a later time if you wish; see special instructions below.

Case is significant, although we plan to make it insignificant in the future.

Some sites may be configured to hide all User IDs. Your email address may be used instead, if you provide one. Other sites may be configured to hide all email addresses, in which case you should probably have a User ID that is different from your email address.

Email

Your Email address is essential for getting email notifications of new messages. Email is also sent when your membership information is changed, whether or not you have made the changes.

You can change your email address when you need to. See instructions below on changing membership info.

Just as for the User IDs, case is significant for Email addresses.

Your email address will be used in a "mailto" URL in messages that you post. But to fight spammers, you can hide your email address from public view by selecting that option (in version 1.9.7). Email addresses are no longer displayed in the outline display of messages.

Below the Email Address field, there are some options for controlling subscriptions to forums at a global level. The default (which may be changed by configuration option) is to subscribe you to only what you specify in each forum. But that includes automatic subscription when you post a message. Or you can suppress your subscriptions to all forums by selecting the "Nothing" option. Unselecting that option will reenable your subscriptions. Another option that may apply to some sites is automatic subscription to a global list that is used for all forums designated as All-Member forums.

Password

To set up your password when you first register, or to change it later on, enter the new password where it says "New Password" and "New Password Again". You are encouraged to create a password that cannot be easily guessed. Never use the password of your login.

There is no way for HyperNews or administrators to tell you your password since it is immediately encrypted, so please try to remember it. If you forget your password, an adminstrator can reset it to a new random password that will be emailed to you. Then you should change the password to one you can remember.

Note to Administrators about blank passwords:

It is possible, but not recommended, to have a blank password if HyperNews is doing the authentication, but if you are set up to have the server do the authentication (i.e. $manualSecurity == 0), my experience is that it doesn't work. The edit-member.pl form doesn't support entering a new blank password, or blank anything for that matter - it assumes you aren't setting a blank field. This is a design bug but it hasn't been much of a problem. Instead, to set a blank password, you have to edit a member info file directly. Since the Password field is actually encrypted, and an encrypted blank is not blank, the HyperNews authentication code (in member-lib.pl) does a special case check for a blank password field.

Name

HyperNews will use your Name to identify you in your messages. You should enter a name, even if it is not your true name.

In previous versions of HyperNews (before 1.9.7) your Name was made into a link to your personal home page, but now it is a link to a page that shows your HyperNews Member info.

How to Use your Membership

Membership applies to all forums on the site, so use the same User ID and password each time it is requested. However, membership at one site does not automatically give you membership at any other site. You may set up a different User ID and/or password on every HyperNews site that you participate in.

HyperNews can be configured to request your UserID and password, when it is needed, in several different ways. If membership is required to do some action (such as adding a message), and the browser requests your UserID and password, you should only have to enter them once per browser session. If you enter your UserID and password in a form for some action, you will probably have to enter them every time for that kind of action. Also, HyperNews may be configured to use "cookies" so you won't have to enter your UserID and password more than once per browser session.

Changing your Membership Information

You can change your membership information at any time later by following the same instructions given above for registering, but this time click on "Edit YOUR Member Info". You only need to enter the data that you want to change - if you leave a field blank or unchanged, that field will remain unchanged. Here are a few special instructions.

If you are currently using your Email address as your UserID and wish to use a nickname instead, go to the Membership form and enter the new nickname in the UserID field, and your Email address in the Email Address field. Don't try to change your password at the same time as you change your UserID; if you do, someone is likely to get confused.
If the HyperNews site only allows members to post messages, and it also supports incoming email, you must provide an email address which is the same one that you will be mailing from.
There is no way (yet) to delete a member via the web. An administrator can delete a member simply by removing the membership info files for that member. But also see the global unsubscribe feature, described above if you really mean to just stop getting email.

After clicking on the "Do It" button at the bottom, you should get a page telling you which information has been changed. You should also receive email telling you the same thing, if you provide a correct email address.

Other Issues related to Membership

Subscribing and Unsubscribing - not the same thing as "joining" or "registering".
HyperNews Security - more detail about how HyperNews does authentication and access control.