The site’s about to get a mild makeover

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We aren’t yet ready for the full rollout, but things are stable enough to get the Plus Memberships going – and to start taking down the ads. In the no
[See the full post at: The site’s about to get a mild makeover]

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SueW, abbodi86, Myst, dononline, Kirsty, Elly

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Hey Woody, I saw your post here, and I just signed up for a Plus Membership with a credit card.  Everything went smoothly as far as signing up and making the payment.  BUT … after doing that I found that I could no longer sign in to the AskWoody website.  I tried several different times — with both Firefox and Chrome.  And I tried logging in with both my Username and my Email address.  But each time my login was rejected.  I finally had to use the Forgot Password link, and reset my password to the exact same password that I’ve always used.  Once I did that reset, I was able to login again.

So everything seems to be OK now.  But I just wanted you to know that this happened.  I’ve never had any login problems on your website before — not until after I signed up for the Plus Membership.  Just FYI.

** Please ignore.  See update below **

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Elly

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Funny you should mention.

I had my password change, on one of my accounts, too. Not sure what happened, but I had to go into Forgot Password as well.

It wasn’t associated with signing up for Plus, though. It was just a weird experience….

There are a lot of moving parts that are getting shifted, even as we speak.

(By the way, thanks! Signing up really does help.)

1 user thanked author for this post.

Elly

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** UPDATE **

OK, this is embarrassing.  Looks like the password problem was on my end.  Please ignore my earlier post here.  Everything on the website is fine.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Customer Support, Elly

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Does any non insulting amount less than $15 open up all the perks announced or would such a donation be considered , just a donation?

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It really is a donation. Whatever amount you feel is appropriate, is appropriate.

Varying means. Varying needs.

2 users thanked author for this post.

cesmart4125, PhotM

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I have had trouble the last several days trying to register.  I enter a username and an email address, click submit, and them in taken to a login page.  But i never get an email from askwoody, so i have no password to put in the box.  Same thing on chrome and firefox.  help?

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Check your spam folder(s). sometimes the reply ends up there.

Worst case, email Woody with the ID you want and the email address to use Woody at AskWoody,con

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Customer Support

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thanks.  nothing in spam.  i ended up succeeding by using a different user name and a different email address.  i don’t know which one did the trick.  never received an error msg.  anyway, now i am in.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Elly

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The reason you had a problem that isn’t noticeable now, is that the devs have fixed a problem with the registration page, that thwarted any attempt to register for much of this week. So it wasn’t a different username that solved the problem – it was simply a technical issue.
One thing ticked off the dev’s to-do list!

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Elly, gtd12345, satrow, PhotM

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Woody

Thanks for all your work. Just tried emailing you on CustomerService@AskWoody.com as per your Plus registration page and it bounces, ‘user unknown’…

I made a donation in December which is shown on the Donors page but doesn’t seem to have been picked up yet to upgrade me to Plus. Maybe the import of recent donors is not working yet?

 

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Be sure it’s typed correctly and try again. I notified Woody.

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Elly

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davews wrote:

I made a donation in December which is shown on the Donors page but doesn’t seem to have been picked up yet to upgrade me to Plus.

Did you use Woody’s sign-up method, with the Coupon?

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Elly

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There’s no automatic import of donors. For most donors, I don’t even know their username. That was quite intentional. There’s a manual procedure for donors.

I’m concerned that your email didn’t go through. The support email is CustomerSupport@AskWoody.com. Do you remember where you got CustomerService? I may have posted it incorrectly and, if so, need to fix it right away!

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woody wrote:

Do you remember where you got CustomerService? I may have posted it incorrectly and, if so, need to fix it right away!

Found, and fixed 😉

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Thanks Woody and for updating the support email address…… we all make mistakes.

I found the ‘coupon’ process a bit confusing and had to read several previous postings to work out what to type in the box. Maybe obvious to some but not me…. Anyway hopefully have now subscribed when my payment of £0 dollars has cleared…

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Everything looks like it has worked properly, especially with the flare showing on your avatar as confirmation!

To check on your account, details are here.

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Yep, and just received the first Woody Plus newsletter, looks good. (which suggests a different coupon code to use!).

 

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Direct credit card payment sailed through easily without error.

On permanent hiatus {with backup and coffee}
offline▸ Win10Pro 2004.19041.572 x64 i3-3220 RAM8GB HDD Firefox83.0b3 WindowsDefender
offline▸ Acer TravelMate P215-52 RAM8GB Win11Pro 22H2.22621.1265 x64 i5-10210U SSD Firefox106.0 MicrosoftDefender
online▸ Win11Pro 22H2.22621.1992 x64 i5-9400 RAM16GB HDD Firefox116.0b3 MicrosoftDefender

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Mine too – and I’ve just received my first newsletter!

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Some questions about the AskWoody Plus membership:

1. In the first AskWoodyPlus Alert No. 16.0.1, Susan Bradley says the following:

“What I will do is highlight patch issues in AskWoody Plus Alerts like this one as soon as they appear and (hopefully) tell you in the next full newsletter what’s okay to install. Or what’s not ready.”

Does this mean that the Master Patch List will only be available to AskWoody Plus subscribers?

2. The Plus Membership page lists “Full access to the indispensable AskWoody Lounge, with a distinctive flare on your avatar” as one of the benefits.

What is “full access” and how does it differ from the access non-Plus members will have?

3. The AskWoody Newsletter/Alerts page says the newsletters and alerts listed there are freely available to everyone while you’re building the plumbing, but I keep getting a 404 Page not found when I click on Issue 16.1.0 – 2019-01-14 — AskWoody Plus Newsletter: Now open under old management. Is that a temporary bug? I’d love to see what the newsletter is going to look like.

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I am going to try to answer some of your questions although, at this point, AskWoody is under construction and nothing is yet concrete. I think the intention is not to take anything away from AskWoody as it now exists, but to add benefits for AskWoody Plus members.

1. I believe the Master Patch List will still be available for non-Plus members. Susan Bradley had a “Patch Watch” section of the Windows Secrets Newsletter that went into more depth on each of the patches. I suspect this will become a part of the new Newsletter (a Plus perk) and may also be available in the Plus section of the Lounge.

2. Non-Plus members will still have access to the Lounge as it is now. But there is to be a Plus section of the Lounge in the future that will contain things like mentioned in #1 above and will be available only to Plus members. There is also all the data from Windows Secrets website. I don’t know where this will end up. All this is still under construction and may take a good while to develop.

3. Things are still under construction and access is not yet complete. Be patient.

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Thank you for the quick answers, PKCano.

The link to the first newsletter started working yesterday. Good start and nice to see all the old familiar names!

Windows Secrets was one of my favorite sites before all the shenanigans. It will be interesting to see how Woody manages to incorporate the strengths but somewhat different focuses of the two sites into one.

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Wanted to mention to all readers an item left unwritten by both anonymous#post-309911 and PKCano. At the top of every AskWoody page, right below the AskWoody titlebox, is a grey banner/ ribbon/ bar of buttons that lead to other sections of the site.

Currently, a |Thanks, Patrons| button has prime space in the center, just to the right is the |Master Patch List|. So long as this appears and is functional, it is available to all. It’s presence is a tell tale mark of assurance.

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I’m a bit confused regarding the registration/migration process.

The first step I learned from AWPlus was that for me as a long-term WS newsletter subscriber it would be a good idea to first register to the AW lounge forum. Further consideration was to better use a different username and email address to avoid messing up the migration process by using the old address which might be subject to later merging of accounts.

During the registration process I ran into the very problems that gtd12345 described above. I tried different usernames, adresses, even browsers, only to end up on the login mask without receiving the verification e-mail. Meanwhile this is history and the registration was successful.

Step 2: Signup for AWPlus. This too was successful using the new (lounge account) e-mail address. Know the open question:

I guess from now on I will receive every AWPlus twice: at the inbox of the new lounge address and via the old WS newsletter address, since there is no logical connection between the two.Would it be a good idea to cancel one of the subscriptions (the older one?) as manual clean up? Or will that be treated somehow/sometime during the merging process from WS to AW? I don’t want to muddle up anything.

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Good questions!

The mechanics are pretty complex, but here’s the view from 30,000 feet.

The old Windows Secrets Newsletter was run on a home-grown system that didn’t connect to the Windows Secrets Lounge/website. AskWoody has connections, but we still have two separate databases – one for the WordPress site (including Plus Membership info), and the other for the MailChimp newsletters. I’m trying hard to stick with off-the-shelf software. That should make things much more stable — and it was the only way we could build this all out in two months.

I can go into details about the dueling database problem, but suffice it to say that you’ve avoided the sharks and landed right where you should be.

Yes, you should continue to get newsletters sent to your old WSNewsletter email address, and sent to your new AskWoody email address.

You can cancel your old subscription anytime by clicking the “Cancel” button at the bottom of any newsletter but… BUT… make sure that you’re cancelling the old email address.

There’s no ill effect from getting two copies of the newsletters (bits are cheap, eh?) but there’s bound to be confusion in the future when you get renewal notices for your old newsletter, while your new subscription is working just fine.

Yet another reason why I’m handling all of the CustomerSupport@AskWoody.com inquiries. Unfortunately, merging two big databases is tough – and takes a lot of manual finagling. I get to be the finagler…

 

1 user thanked author for this post.

Tinu

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By the way, I can reach in and cancel the other subscription for you. (The @web.de one?)

Just send me email to authorize it CustomerSupport@AskWoody.com.

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One good thing  about the new subscription format as opposed to the advertising  format.  Microsoft’s NewsGuard  won’t have an  effect on the  AskWoody site.  Even though the postings that are critical of Microsoft products  and are researched professionally;  Microsoft would still probably abuse the Microsoft NewsGuard  format and label the site as  “unreliable” and advise visitors to boycott  advertisers as they do with sites that use the  advertising format.

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I hadn’t thought of that.

Microsoft as a company seems to ignore me. Fair enough. Individuals, however, continue to watch. Not like deer in headlights, mind you, but they’re actively interested in learning what they can do better.

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This NewsGuard is just starting out so who knows what’s going to develop in the near future.  So far they have been just  annotating mostly political  news sites but the potential for abuse is there for them to monitor  sites critical of Microsoft  it`s self.

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