Frequently Asked Questions - About This Website and How To Dos

If you already have an account established on this website, go to Member Login and click on the link that says "Request New Password".  Enter either your username or email address and then press the "Email new password" button.  The system will immediately send an email to the email address on file for your account, with your username on it and a new temporary password.  Once you login with that password, you should go to "My Account" and change your password.
Take a note of your username, you will need it to log in in the future. Your username appears at the top of your "My Account" and in emails sent out by the system. It is case sensitive.
If you require further assistance Contact our webmaster... or Read more FAQs.

For the purposes of this Association website your username should be your own full name e.g. Bronwyn Smith. This will help all members recognise who they are speaking with. Member Property name and website are easily located from within your profile ("my account"). To have your username changed - please contact our webmaster with the name of the person who will be using the website account.
If you require more than one username per Membership (e.g. husband and wife/partners) you can do this, but you will need to request a separate Web Account with a different email address for the subsequent username. This will enable each individual to log in and interact in their own right. (Encouraged!)

Currently we do not allow advertising or signatures in posts (this may be reviewed in the future).
Contact details and a link to your website are available from your profile (update details in "My Account" for logged in Members) and this is accessible from every post you make. You do not need to sign your name or provide contact details when you add a comment, this is considered as "clutter" and will be removed at the discretion of Admin. The practice of "link dropping" or "unwarranted self promotion" is not encouraged.
Opportunities for Member property promotion are available and will grow over time. Suppliers are welcome to contact us to discuss advertising opportunities that may be available and may sign up for our Industry newsletter to be informed of future initiatives.

As with any interactive website or forum, we welcome your active participation but advise this is a moderated forum. While it is understood that our website users may not always agree with each other's opinions, posters who make derogatory, slanderous, or personal
attacks will not be tolerated.

Likewise, attempts to spam our audience and blatant attempts at unwarranted self promotion will be removed immediately.

Members of the public are welcome to make comments for possible inclusion. Anonymous comments are not made live immediately but are
sent to our editors for approval.

In all circumstances, Bed & Breakfast and Farmstay Association of NSW & ACT Inc. (BBFNSW-ACT) reserves the right to add, edit, reject, move or re-use all content posted to this website without explanation. View full Website Policy here.

Unfortunately, it is the nature of the Internet to be fickle in many regards and data can be lost before it is saved (true with any computer tool - eg Word). You may momentarily lose connectivity or gremlins in general may wisk the words you have painstackingly put together away! Hopefully this is a rare occurence.
To avoid this situation when composing your content, here a few tips.
Compose your text in a text editor (like Notepad) and then when complete make your entry on the website (your copy is safe on your computer). This is always a good idea when creating something lengthy or of great importance, as it gives you time to compose your thoughts and make corrections in what you are saying.
Before you hit the Submit / Post button, copy what you have written to your clipboard, that way if anything goes wrong on its way to becoming published you have it safely - ready to Paste and try again.
If you are very lucky, using your back button might return you to the text you were typing, but you cannot rely fully on this method.

"My Account" Explained

Your account on this website contains information and links to various functions related to your web account.

Orders

This section enables you to keep track of any orders you have placed via our online store. You can review your ordering history, order status and print invoices. Note: Membership fees and Event registrations are handled in a separate area.

History

This refers to the length of time you have had a web account on this website (been a member of this website community). It does not relate to Membership with the Association. For information in regards to membership, please contact the Membership Secretary.

Bookmarks

This provides a handy list of pages you have bookmarked on this website, so you can refer back or edit them. These are visible to other logged in users, so interesting items are shared.

Edit Your Information

When you click on the edit tab you will see other options appear directly underneath. These include:

Edit your "account" information:  change your website login password or email address. Upload a small photo and toggle on or off your personal contact form (only available to other logged in website users).

Edit  your "more information" (Members Only): here you can update your contact details and add a little more about yourself / business. This is optional and is displayed to all, when they click on links to your profile (web account). Filling this out provides a little extra marketing of the Association's Member Properties and a list of all Members who have web accounts on this website is available to the public, sorted by tourism region. (A full list of all our current full members' properties is available at our Accommodation Directory website.)

Edit your "association contact details" (Members Only):  This enables you to keep your Association Membership contact details up to date. This information is used for Association communications and member to member contact  via the Member Lookup (available to logged in members only). (Note! There seems to be a small bug in this area, it is being worked on - member note: if you get an error message, please try again later.)

Manage Email Notifications (Subscriptions) Members Only:

Click the "subscriptions" tab and then the "settings" link to change your default settings for notifications about new content on this website. By default, members are subscribed to receive email notification of new comments on pages created or commented on. You can also manage subscriptions per "pages" and "categories". See the links at the top of the "subscriptions" page in your account.

When viewing a Forum topic of interest there are two ways to make a comment and interact with others, either:
1) Join Discussion In General - Use the "Post Reply" button displayed at the top of the first page (Page 1) to reply to the Original Post. This will take you to the Comments "Reply" box where you can type in your response and click on "Post Comment" to submit your input.
OR
2) Respond Specifically -  Reply specifically to a comment made by somebody else by clicking on the Reply button found in the bottom right hand corner of their comment. You will then see a copy of the comment you are replying to and can enter your response in the Comment box and click the "Post Comment" button.

The best way to go about adding a new forum topic is:
Go to the Main Forums Overview page and select the Forum you want to post to.
Depending on your access level you may have multiple choices, so select the forum according to the audience you want to address (i.e. public/member only).
Click on the appropriate Forum (marked with a folder image).
Click on the button at the top - labelled "Post new Forum Topic".
That's it! Your Forum selection will be remembered and you're ready to create.

COPYING & PASTING from Word / Email / Website or any other formatted document usually messes up the page formatting and provides an inconsistent look and poor code.

To get around this problem, this website uses the following input formats:

For all - there is a Filtered HTML input type:

• automatically creates line and paragraph breaks for you (simply use the enter key to space down)
• Turns email and web page addresses into links (no need to add HTML)

Logged In Users - WYSIWYG HTML Editor Input Type:

To add some formatting to your content select the HTML Editor by clicking on "INPUT FORMAT" from the link underneath the input box.

• Use the keyboard command Ctrl V or the button marked with a "T" to enter the text you have copied from your document - it will clean out the code and provide plain text to work with.
• Now, use the buttons across the top to format your text, keep things to a minimum
• When you submit your content the Style Sheet (CSS) of the website will be applied.

Hint: Use a Text Editor like Notepad to prepare your text so it is more readily usable - not only here but also when compiling email newsletters etc in other applications.

Quality check: after you have created your content, have a look and see if there are any errors or things you wish to add or change - click the "edit" tab and edit to suit (where available).

There are a number of features built in to assist you find and keep track of information on this website. Any combination of them could be used according to your personal preferances.

Search This Website (available to all):

At the top right of each page there is a Search box. If you are looking for something in particular or are trying to follow a particular topic, you can enter your search term and click the Search button.

Forum Posts (available to all):

New Topics (that you have not previously viewed) can be seen by markers - available when you view the top level of the Forums list.

New Posts (that you have not previously viewed) can be seen by markers - available when you are viewing an actual Forum.

My Website Tools Features (available to logged in Members Only):

(Found in the left hand menu bar - labelled "My Website Tools")

My Bookmarks - A handy tool to collate a list of pages you want to remember and store for later reference - in one handy place. Where available you will see "Bookmark This" or "Unbookmark This" links on pages that you can toggle on or off. Manage your bookmarks from the "My Bookmarks" link page.

My Unread Forum Posts - A list of all new forum topics or those with new posts that you have not viewed yet.

View All Recent Content - A list of all content types with new pages, comments or updates that you have not viewed yet marked appropriately.

View Only Posts That I Have Participated In - From "View All Recent Content" you can refine your list to contain only the posts that you have created or participated in. Type in your Username and click Apply. To view ALL Recent Content again - remove the username and click Apply again.

Subscriptions (Email notifications) - A list of new content or comments on pages or categories that you are subscribed to, sent to your email box. Subscriptions links on available pages can be toggled on or off or manage your Email Notification Subscriptions from the Subscriptions tab in My Account. (Click on "Categories" to manage your Forum notifications etc.)

• Please Note: the default for Members email notifications is set to send you new comments on the content you have participated in only - so log in often and look around to keep up to date with what else is going on on the website and add categories of interest to your subscriptions.

Advanced Search - On the search / results page you will find a link to "Advanced Search". You can use this to refine your search with the tools there.

Members of the Bed & Breakfast and Farmstay Association of NSW & ACT are eligible to apply for an account on this website. Accounts are also automatically set up when a purchase is made via our shop. This is so purchasers can track their orders and re-order items easily in the future.
In the future, we hope to offer facilities for other users so they can more fully interact with our membership based association and keep up to date with happenings within the Industry.
Please sign up for our Industry newsletter to be informed of future initiatives and advertising opportunities. For membership information please see our Member Information section.