SeaHorse Dive Club Website Primer

Welcome to the SeaHorse Dive Club online community. This page will guide you through some of the basics, and help you enjoy our site more and engage with your fellow members.

Why do I need to sign-in?

Much of the site is open to the public. Our Calendar of events and certain posts that show up on the home page are there to invite people with an interest in the SeaHorses to learn more.

One of the benefits of membership is access to members-only content, such as blog posts, but also access to our online community features: your own personal member page, ability to comment on posts and pages, groups and discussion forums. Think of it like a tiny Facebook for divers, only without the evil.

How do I sign-in?

Sign-in with the email account and password associated with your club membership. If you don’t know your password, pick the Lost your password? link. It will send you an email with a link that will reset your password and let you choose a new one.

First-Time Users

If you signed up through our online form, you should be ready to go.

If an admin set up your account manually, either your account was migrated from your legacy membership or you signed up using a paper form, when you Sign-In for the first time, pick the Lost your password? link to complete the process. It will send you an email with a link which will reset your password, and let you choose a new one.

Sometimes auto-generated emails get filtered by email servers. Be sure to check your SPAM folder, or for Gmail users, your Social and Promotions tabs.

I’m Still Stuck

Completely lost? Contact support@seahorsediveclub.com, and your friendly neighborhood admin will help you out.

I’m in, how do I change my account details?

If you register as a new member through our online form, you will be redirected to your Account & Password page automatically. Change how your name appears on the site and other details there.

You can edit your account details or change your password at any time through the Account & Password link.

Set up your community member page

This is important. One of the first things you should do on the site, once you’ve successfully signed-in, is go to your community member page through the My Page link. It’s like your Facebook profile page, and you’ll want to go there and choose some settings. I guarantee you will want to change some of the defaults.

When you get there, it’ll have your name and either blank profile and cover images, or your friendly neighborhood SeaHorse admin may have chosen some whimsical images when setting up your account. No matter, you can easily change them.

Edit your community profile

Update or enter the information in your profile. This is how people see and interact with you on the site. Your profile has two parts: personal information and diving experience. You should update them both. Personal information lets people contact you to invite you to go diving. The diving experience section lets them know your experience level and what kinds of things interest you.

Field Visibility

You control the visibility of data in your profile. Some of the information, like your name, is seen by everybody, but other fields, you can change that visibility. If it’s something you can change, there’ll be a Change link next to the current visibility setting.

When editing ANY field in your community profile, make sure you choose the field visibility setting.

By default, the site limits visibility of your information to signed-in members only, but that includes all club members and online community members. If you don’t want them all to see your phone number, be sure to adjust this setting.

Admins, of course, can see everything.

All of your profile visibility settings can be changed in one place, in Settings>Profile Visibility.

Change your profile picture

Your profile picture is what represents you on the site. It shows up in the members directory, with forum posts, comments, and on your member page.

This is a screenshot of a row from our membership directory.

As you can see, it doesn’t necessarily need to be a picture of your face. You can upload any whimsical thing you want, well, almost anything, this is a family site after all. If the admin set up your account, we may have done this for you already but you’ll probably want to change it. You don’t have to have a profile pic, you can be like Odd Thomas and stay anonymous, but it’s more fun if you do.

You can upload your desired picture. The system will ask you to crop it to a square, and there you are. Like the other settings, you can change this at any time.

Change your cover image

Your cover image is the backdrop to your profile. It shows up in various places, but mainly on your member profile page. If somebody is looking at your profile, they’ll see it. It’s fun to have one, and adds a little personality to your member profile.

A couple of things to note: the system will ask for an image at least 1,300 pixels wide, but smaller still works. The display of the image has an aspect ratio of about 4.6:1, and it takes this right out of the middle; it doesn’t ask. If you want to control that, crop an image yourself before uploading it, or find one that works.

Changing your member profile settings

The last thing we’ll cover in this primer is your profile settings. These are important, so please visit them and ensure they’re what you want as soon as you can.

Profile email settings

Unless you really like getting lots of email, you’ll want to change these. The system can generate lots of different email notifications. The default for whether you want email notifications for all of this is ‘Yes’, so you should look at them and decide. You can always change them at any time.

Profile information visibility

We know we’ve been emphasizing this, but it’s something you should attend to. By default, the system restricts visibility of your profile and the member directory to signed-in members only. But signed-in members includes all club members and online community members, and as we grow, that number will get larger. You want to control who can see what information in your profile.

Again, the choices are: Everyone, Only Me, All Members, and My Friends. Since the system restricts access to members only, the Everyone and All Members settings are essentially the same.

Profile Account Settings – Membership

The Account tab in your profile settings is where you’ll find all the information about your current club membership status. It shows what kind of membership you have, e.g., Club Member, Senior Member, etc., when your membership expires, payment invoices, etc.

Note: this one looks weird because it’s test account.

The Account tab has links for renewing your membership or changing your membership, for example if you’ve retired you could change from Club Member to Senior Member, and save some money.

It also shows payment receipts for all of your dues payments. If you have questions about your account, you can contact our Membership Coordinator.

Questions?

If you have any questions, email support@seahorsediveclub.com and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

Final thoughts – Have fun with it!

We just want to encourage you to have fun with the site. Engage with your fellow members. Comment on posts, join groups and engage in discussions on the forums. Explore! Play! The more we engage with each other, the more fun the club will be for everybody.

The best thing of all of course, and the thing we’re all here for, is to go diving. So if you want to go but don’t have a buddy, use the site to contact your fellow members and get out there.

Contribute to the site! Be an author…

If you’d like to be a contributor and write blog posts for the site, let us know. You don’t have to be Hemmingway or an expert scientist or instructor, you can write about your own travels and dive experiences, or interesting dive related or marine science topics that interest you. Contact editor@seahorsediveclub.com for more information.