[Shannon]

Sometimes members have problems logging in. Please follow these steps before emailing us.

1. Are you a registered member?

This is very important. After you've filled out the registration form, there are two steps. First, you will receive an email with a link you must click to validate your email address. If you did not give us a real email address, you will not have full access to the site and we will have no way of contacting you to remedy the error. If you don't receive this email, please check your spam/bulk folder. If it's not there, please contact us at admin@pandys.org.

Once you've clicked that link in your email, please remember that it may take up to 24 hours to be approved manually by a moderator. If it has not been 24 hours, please be patient. If it has been over 24 hours since registration, try the following.

2. Try the "magic fix"

We don't have a clue why this works, but it solves the problem in 99% of the cases.

If after you input your user name and password, you still can only view public forums, try this.

When you log on, choose "yes" to the "remember my log-in details" question.

If this doesn't work, move on to the next step.

3. Clean your cookies, cache, and files.

Do this by:

In Internet Explorer:

- Open the Tools menu and choose Internet Options.
- Under Temporary Internet Files click Delete Cookies AND Delete Files
- Under History click Clear History
- Click OK.

In Netscape:

- Open the Edit menu and choose Preferences.
- Click the Advanced category and select Cache.
- Click the Clear Disk Cache button and the Clear Memory Cache button.
- Click OK.

To Manually Delete Cookies:

- Find your Cookies folder, located on your computer's hard drive (for Windows machines it is usually C:\Cookies or C:\Windows\Cookies).
- Select all of your cookies and drag them into your trash.
- Empty your trash.

5. If you are still having log-in problems...

Make sure your local cookie settings aren't preventing Pandy's from storing on your system:

For example, in Internet Explorer, go to Tools, Internet Options.
On the privacy tab, click Edit...
In the next screen, put in the domain for pandys (pandys.org). Then click on Always Allow.
This way, you can keep ultra tight cookie controls and still have your pandy's cookies.
Also flush your cookies both in your browser and from the "Remove Cookies" link on the bottom of your message board page.
Note that the automatic setting of icons to read status doesn't happen instantly. You have to leave the browser/message board session long enough for the iB session to expire.

6. If you STILL can't get logged in

Contact the mods at admin@pandys.org and we'll check your user status.