Open Lounge Help

Welcome to the help section. My name is Mat, I’m the webmaster of Open Lounge.

I’ve created this area of the site to answer the most common questions and problems that arise when using Open Lounge. I’ve tried to make it as clear and user-friendly as possible, and also injected a little light hearted humor here and there. I hope you like it!

Click on any of the headings below to ‘slide open’ some information just below it. Click on the menu heading again, and the content will slide closed. If more information is needed, I’ll include a link to another more detailed page.

I’m using javascript to do this, so if you have javascript disabled on your browser, you’ll probably just be seeing the whole thing to start with!

If you can’t find the answer to your question here, feel free to drop me a line via our contact page.

OK, let’s see if we can quickly find an answer to your quesiton. Scan down the list below and pick one that seems most likely to contain the solution you’re looking for.

Browsers: Most site problems are caused by your browser settings, so check here first:

The differences in the way browsers show web sites, and the myriad varieties of browser add-ons and plug-ins that mess with the code of a web page, make designing a bit of a nightmare.

If parts of the site look weird, out of shape or broken, or something isn’t working as it should, it’s most likely that it’s something to do with your browser settings.

Obviously, there’s nothing any webmaster can do to change your personal computer settings, but we can try our best to advise you how to do it yourself.

Click here for information about the various browsers, and how to avoid the usual problems that can arise as you surf the net.

Subscribe to Blog Feed: RSS is fairly new for most people, here’s some info:

RSS feeds give you the option of being alerted whenever a contributor posts new articles on their blog.

Gone are the days of bookmarking and checking in daily for the latest updates, RSS makes it all easy and automatic.

Click here for a short article on RSS, what it is, how it works and how to use it.

Big Bigger Biggest: The best way to increase text size if your eyes are as bad as mine!

If you’re anything like me, you like to see BIG TEXT on a screen, but the way you increase the size of your display font, will make a BIG difference to how you see the pages – you need to zoom the page, NOT the text!

I’ve done my best to make the site clear and easy to read, and made a conscious effort not to use small fonts unless there was little other choice.

However, if your eyes aren’t ‘hawk-like’ and you like to ‘zoom in’, it’s best to do that with the whole page, not with the font size.

In most browsers, you can set the default font size (small, medium, large etc.) which will affect the size of text on the page, but not the images, place holders, boxes and other things the designer might use.

Or, you can use the zoom tool, and zoom the page by percentage (a nice trick with many browsers, is to simply hold the ctrl key and use your mouse wheel if you have one).

The second way is much better, as it keeps the proportions of the page the same (or nearly the same), and doesn’t ‘break’ the layout.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so here are 3 pictures from another of my websites to show the two methods used to make the page text bigger.

The first picture is how it looks at ‘normal’ size, the second is using the ‘zoom page’ tool, the third is using the ‘increase font size’ tool. I’ve increased the font a little more on the 3rd picture to show how it ‘breaks’ the page layout and makes the buttons virtually unusable.

   

Javascript: What is it, why do I need it and how do I check if it’s ON?

Javascript is a programming language that is used to make web pages interactive. It runs on the visitor’s computer and so does not require constant downloads from the web site.

It’s used to make websites do funky things, like move stuff around on the page, load and swap images and validate forms before they are submitted.

Some people disable javascript in their browsers because they are afraid it may be used to hijack their computers. That’s definitely throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and totally unnecessary with modern browsers, which are very good at detecting when a javascript routine is acting in a suspicious way and blocking it.

You must enable Javascript if you want to use Open Lounge properly.

I’ve made you a page with some instructions to do so for one or two of the common browsers, but before you go looking how to turn it on, you can test if you have JS already enabled by clicking this button:

Click this button to see if your JS is enabled

If you didn’t see a little box pop up in the middle of your screen, then your JS is disabled.

Please click here for information on how to enable it for the most common web browers.

Email Delivery Problems: ‘On a bad day, half our email won’t be delivered!’

As a webmaster, this is perhaps my biggest headache (after Internet Explorer!).

There’s a war going on between the spammers and the email service providers, and it’s the genuine websites like Open Lounge and their users and clients that are getting injured in the cross fire.

Nowadays, there is no guarantee that you will receive any email sent to you by any person, website or organisation, because there is always a chance that your email service provider or ISP will filter, block or just plain delete it without your knowlege.

Filtering is a mystery for most of us. One day the same email that was blocked the day before will be delivered, and if we put the wrong word or phrase in an email and send it often enough, it can get us blacklisted over time!!

You can minimise the damage, maximise your chances of receiving mail, and help us out in the process, by learning how to whitelist.

I’ve built a page all about it here.

For most of the email providers, whitelisting is very simple and can be done in seconds with a few clicks.

Please whitelist all our email addresses to make sure our mail is delivered to you. Just because you may have received one of our emails at some time in the past, doesn’t mean you will get them all.

Viruses (Viri?!): How to be a ‘safe surfer’ and why you won’t get a virus from Open Lounge:

If you are surfing the internet without up-to-date active virus protection .....THAT’S CRAZY.

Sooner or later, you are going to get an infection.

There are stacks of 100% FREE anti-virus programs out there, fully supported and updated on a daily basis. One of our favorites is AVG, but there are many others. If you don’t currently use one – GET ONE!

One of the most common ways to get a virus is through an email attachment. However, this can only infect your computer if you actually OPEN the attachment, so NEVER, EVER, EVER open an attachment from someone you do not completely trust.

We generally do not send emails with attachments, however, your AntiVirus program may add a small text file as an attachment to all incoming emails – it didn’t come from us!

It is possible, that you could receive mail from some worm virus that carries an openlounge.org reply email address. Obviously, with thousands of site users, our email addresses are on a lot of computers.

Again, this probably did not come from us if there is an attachment, DO NOT CLICK ON THE ATTACHMENT!

We host our site on the servers of pair.com. This is one of the worlds largest and most secure web servers, with over 100,000 webistes hosted worldwide. Their server protection is legendary. We have a dedicated server, we do not share it with anyone else.

You can rest assured, that you will not get any kind of virus, or any other computer infection, whilst surfing Open Lounge or from one of our LEGITIMATE emails.

Login Problems: “I’m using the right details, but your site won’t let me in!”

I get this complaint quite a bit.

90% of the time, the user has made a typo in the login form, or their browser is ‘auto-filling’ the email and password box for them with some old information or mistyped data.

The other 10% of the time, someone has forgotten that they changed their login email or their login password some time ago, and are still using the old details, or they have made a typo when changing their details and now the database thinks their email address is yahoo.cop or something like that.

I can find most of these errors and correct them for you if there is something unique in your login details. I can run a database search on the unique ‘bit’ and find the account. As long as the typo isn’t in the unique bit!

Please don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s almost NEVER a problem with the site programming. The database stores the information you give it, then retrieves it when you try to log in. If the info is the same, you get logged in, if it’s different, you get refused. Only under very rare circumstances, will we ever manually edit a user’s login details.

Anyway, whatever the reason for your inabillity to login, I’m more than happy to help you find a solution, so contact me if you’ve already made triple sure you’ve not made a typo, and you’re sure your details are up to date.

Repeating Login Screen: “I keep getting sent back to the login screen, even after I have been logged in!”

This is definitely one of the most frustrating problems to have.

If you are getting sent back to the login screen after having SUCCESSFULLY logged in, then the most likely reason is that your browser is refusing our session cookie.

Session cookies are used by probably EVERY major site on the internet today, and are essential to the operation of a ‘members only’ area like certain parts of Open Lounge.

A session cookie is a harmless text file placed on your computer by our server. It contains nothing more than a long string of letters and digits (you’ve probably seen them in your browser address bar on some sites). This is basically a ‘key’ which our server uses to keep your information handy and safe whilst you are logged in.

A session cookie cannot gather any personal information about you from your computer, and when you close your browser, or 2 hours after you leave the site, the session cookie is deleted permanently.

However, without a session cookie, you cannot stay logged in and use the sections of the site that require it. If our cookie is blocked, you will keep getting sent back to the login screen, time and time again.

For instructions on how to enable session cookies in your browser, click here

If enabling didn’t work, you can try deleting currently stored cookies, in case they have become corrupted, or as a last resort, reinstalling your browser (I had to do that for a client once, and it did work!)

Perhaps instead of re-installing, you can download another browser first (Firefox, Safari, Opera, Google Chrome) and try that out. Maybe you’ll prefer it and decide not to update/re-install your current program! You’ll find download links for the most popular FREE browsers here

Unfortunately, this is one of those issues where some 3rd party software program, such as a firewall program, or even a network/office firewall, can interfere with the cookie, so it can be quite difficult to sort this one out if your browser is set up correctly and therefore not the culprit.

The most frustrating aspect of the problem, is that it can suddenly start happening, even if you’ve been using the site normally for years. I assure you, this is not because we changed something, it’s almost certainly because some program on your computer (browser, firewall, security) has just updated itself, and there is either a bug in the new update, or there is a setting you need to tweak.

If none of the fixes I’ve included work, then I’m probably not going to be able to help, but am happy to refund any fee if you have paid for access to any of our contributors private areas and cannot get access.

“I click on a button or a link and nothing happens”

The most likely reason for this is that the link is designed to open a new browser window, and you have some kind of ‘pop-up’ blocker stopping it.

I used these kind of links VERY sparingly on the new site build, precisely because there are soooo many toolbars, pop-up blockers, security programs, firewalls etc which block or interfere with windows opening, that it’s becoming more and more difficult for the average person to know what’s actually installed on their computer, what it’s doing, and how to get things to work properly.

One of the tricks that seems to work with most of these kinds of blockers, is to simply hold down the control key when you click (that’s the key labelled: Ctrl, usually found in the bottom left of your keyboard). If that fails, you can also try holding the shift key. In some of the newer browsers, Ctrl opens a new tab and shift opens a new window.

“I am seeing Pop-Up ads continually appear when I am on Open Lounge”

We don’t use any pop-up, pop-under, pop-out or pop-anything advertising here on Open Lounge.

If you are experiencing pop-up advertising whilst on Open Lounge, and you don’t have any other browser windows open to other sites, it’s likely that your computer has become infected with some kind of spyware/malware.

These infections are very common, and if you are not incredibly careful with the things you install on your computer, sooner or later, you are going to pick one up.

Spyware can easily hijack your browser and make it display popup ads that are triggered by keywords on the site you are visiting, so it even looks like it is coming from us!

The good news is, most spyware programs are easily detected and removed by other programs, called spyware removal programs!!

If you’d like to check for spyware on your own computer, we recommend the excellent, and COMPLETELY FREE spyware removal tool ADAWARE.

Click here to download the free Adaware program (opens a new window, so just close the window when you’re done downloading to come back to Open Lounge)

If the window doesn’t open, try holding down your control (Ctrl) key and clicking, or failing that, your shift key. If the link is old and broken, then just do a search for Adaware.