Registering for the Forum
Shoe: FordFE.com is always accepting new members.
www.FordFE.com is an almost free technical discussion forum. This forum runs perfectly without any funding.
There are no fees or dues, and anyone interested in the FE engine for any reason is invited to
start or join into a conversation (Thread). It costs roughly a penny per 100 page views to keep
Network54 banner advertising away, so we accept donations from members who occasionally choose to offer
assistance in this regard. If banner advertising shows up, you may wish to donate a few bucks when
you get tired of it.
Signing up for membership to post a message at www.FordFE.com is a two stage process that can be tough
to navigate if you aren't told what buttons to push. It would be easy if the registration process
was designed in a linear fashion, but the process jumps around illogically.
The first stage is to create an "account" with Network54.com which gets you a login name and password
that will let you log-in to any of the thousands of Network54 forums. A login, however, doesn't make
you a member of a particular forum, nor does it allow you to post in restricted forums like ours. Our
access restrictions were activated a few years back because of some chronic spam issues. Becoming a
member allows you to edit your posts if you wish, so the free membership requirement has brought more than
just spam relief. If you already have a login name for Net54 (perhaps from a previous attempt to
register for www.FordFE.com membership), you don't need to repeat this first stage (steps 1 through 18),
but you can start fresh if you want.
The second stage is to "register to become a member" of a particular Net54 forum, such as to this FE
forum. This forum can be found at both www.FordFE.com and www.network54.com/Forum/74182. Once
you become a member of www.FordFE.com, you can post and edit, and you also gain posting and editing
access in the "FE Classifieds" and "FE Photos" forums related to www.FordFE.com (refer to text links at
the top left of the webpage).
First Stage:
- 01) Go to www.fordfe.com.
- 02) Click the "Create Account" text at the upper left of the webpage. Other buttons will get
you to the same place.
- 03) Create your own login name (upper case text, lower case text, and numbers are permitted, no
spaces), such as "MyLogin22", into the "login name" box. As long as no one else at Net54 has
already picked that character string, it'll be automatically authorized by Network54. Note that
this login name is not the same one that will appear at the top of your post, but will instead show up
else where in your post as your "login" identifier.
- 04) Choose a password and type it into the "password" box. Write it down so you don't forget it.
- 05) Retype the same password into the "Password (Again)" box.
- 06) Type your email address into the "email" box so Network54 can send you an email to "Verify" that
your email address is not fake.
- 07) The "Password Reminder" box can probably best be set to "Never", since you likely don't want it
to be changing on a regular basis.
- 08) The Network54 Newsletter" box can probably best be set for "Never".
- 09) The "Language" box should be "English" for text characters to show up properly.
- 10) The "Auto Logoff" cookie setting defaults to "hourly", but this means the "Network54 logoff
cookie" on your PC might expire while in the middle of writing a long post, and this will log you off.
It would not be a problem, except Network54 software is buggy and you might lose a long post you are
writing if you don't save the text just right. I recommend setting "Auto Logoff" cookie to "daily"
(or longer), as this will keep your cookie logged in to the forum for a day. You can manually logoff
whenever you want by selecting the button "Logoff" at the top of the main page. Side note: The member
names listed at the top of the page represent only those members who are both logged in and also have
viewed a forum page within the last ten minutes. Being logged in and idle for more than ten minutes
causes your name to disappear. Logging out causes your name to disappear from the list after ten
minutes.
- 11) Click on the "I agree to Network54's Terms and conditions of use" checkbox.
- 12) Click on the "Create Account" button at the bottom of the page.
- 13) You are brought to a www.fordfe.com login window but you don't need to do anything with it.
Just close the window. You are now a "registered user" with a Net54 account, but you have not yet
signed up to become a member of www.FordFE.com forum and are not yet authorized to post in the forum.
- 14) You can optionally skip steps 15 through 18 and jump to step 19 if you want to avoid some
frustration.
You might optionally want to skip these next four steps:
- 15) You can optionally wait maybe an hour for the arrival of an automated four-paragraph
"verification email" from "nobody@network54.com" containing the subject line "Network54 Account
Verification" which contains a secure link in the third paragraph that you must respond to if you want
your account "verified". It doesn't need to be verified to post to the forum.
- 16) Click on the link in the email, or cut-and paste the link to your browser if clicking doesn't
work. The purpose of this email is to verify you have not sent a fake email address to Network54
for the purpose of becoming a spammer. Again, this is still just the Net54 account, as you are not
yet at the point of registering for the FordFE.com forum.
- 17) A secure network54.com web page opens that requests you type in your the Network54 login name and
password that you just created.
- 18) Type in your login and password and note there are THREE buttons you can select. If you
press the "Register" button you'll most likely get an "Unknown page" error. If you press the
"Login" button, you'll probably get a "Verification failure" message and the resend option just results
in an identical result. There is no need to press the "Lost Password" button. Don't sweat any
of this, as you became registered to Network54 back at step 14, and to this day I am not a verified
member. Be careful about navigating too much through this area, as you can click yourself into some
areas that will spam you with advertising if your spam filters aren't properly set. On the other
hand, you can poke around until you get to the place where you can configure your account to do stuff
like set the timezone so timestamps of all posts appear in your local time instead of the default Pacific
Coast time.
Second Stage
- 19) Go to www.FordFE.com
- 20) Click the "Post Now!" text near the top of the page. Don't worry, you do NOT yet have
access to post.
- 21) Enter your login name and password into the boxes and click "login now".
- 22) Depending on the configuration of your PC, a window might pop up that asks if you want your
computer to remember the password. I click "yes" as it is a real convenience not to have to retype
it each time I post, and the window generally doesn't ask twice.
- 23) HERE IS WHERE YOU REGISTER FOR THE FORUM: Immediately below the word "Members" on the lower left
of the page is the link text "Apply for membership". Click on the link.
- 24) The "Members Group Application" page is displayed. Your full email address will likely
already be displayed in the box called "Your email address". It needs to be there to validate your
email address (fortunately, this is a different "validation" process than the faulty one in steps 15-18).
- 25) A text box allows you to enter optional information to let the FordFE.com forum owner, Anthony
Sissini, know who is registering. You don't need to fill anything out if you don't want to.
- 26) Click the "Apply to Group" button.
- 27) An "Application Sent" page is displayed. You may close the window.
- 28) In an hour or so another automated email message from Net54 will arrive. It'll be from a
sender named "N54 Group Membership Application Verification" with a subject line "Network54 Validation
Key". Note that the "Validation Key" email is not the same as the "Account Verification" email
listed in steps 15-18. the "Validation Key" email is the one that let's Anthony know you are
interested in forum membership.
- 29) Click on the link in the email.
- 30) A browser window shows up that says "Your email has been validated".
- 31) You'll have to wait until Anthony reads his email and activates your application before you will
receive a final email from Network54 letting you know you are a member of the forum. This can take
an hour to several hours, rarely it might even take days if Anthony is off on business or vacation.
- 32) An email from "Network54 Support" will arrive with the header "Network54: Group Members:
Membership Approved". The body of the message will contain a link that takes you to a list of the
four different forums which are related to www.FordFE.com. You can close the window.
- 33) Visit www.FordFE.com and post whenever you want.
If the registration process fails at any step, feel free to email me at shoe@bitstream.net with the
symptoms to help isolate the problem and correct it. Sometimes, security settings might be set too
tight on a PC to permit forum communications, and some simple adjustments can get things working.
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