Upgrading your forum membership
The steps to upgrade your membership are:
- The first step is for all CAMRA members registered on the forum to visit the edit account settings page of their profile (under the User Control Panel, linked from the top-right of every page).
- Enter your CAMRA membership number and the password that you use for the national CAMRA website (by default, this will be your postcode all in capital letters with the space character removed - we recommend that you change your camra.org.uk password from its default value; if you've forgotten your password, you can request for a password reminder to be emailed to you).
- Click Submit to complete the upgrade.
Once the upgrade is complete, your account settings page will display your CAMRA Membership Number. To change your password, you must follow the link on this page and change your password on the central CAMRA database.
For now, you should see no differences in the operation of the forums.
New Forum Users
When you register, you can either register as a normal forum user or a CAMRA member. Obviously, we recommend that you register as a CAMRA member, so that you'll have full access to the forums. If you're not a member then you can always Join Us!
Problems
If you have any problems with the upgrade process or after upgrading, please post a message in Forum Feedback or email forum@camra.org.uk.
If you've moved house in the last 5 years, and been a CAMRA member all this time, try your previous postcode(s) as your password... all in upper case with the space removed.
Why make this change?
There are many reasons for this change. One of the main ones is that the forums can bring CAMRA policies into debate, and that is something which should not be done in public. We also plan to review the current topics, so people are welcome to make suggestions under Forum Feedback.
The CAMRA forums originally started off as an interactive part of CAMRA's "Save Our Pubs" campaign and have grown from that point. It was decided that it was better to have open forums while we implemented a mechanism for CAMRA-members users to upgrade. We've now implemented this and are applying it in a controlled migration.
When will the forums be restricted to CAMRA members?
An exact date for restricting the content of the CAMRA forums (other than "Save Our Pubs") hasn't yet been decided. I currently expect this to happen at the end of November 2009, in order to give forum users plenty of time to upgrade. This message will be updated with an date when we have one.
So, please upgrade your account now!
