We love to get your feedback about our articles at BouncebackCafe.com.  But we’ve heard from many others of you that you experienced difficulties when you tried to comment – and that you ultimately gave up.  So we decided to offer some suggestions that we think might help those of you that have been foiled in your attempt to comment.

In order to post feedback, we ask that you login to the website.  To login, you need to have a username.  This post is a summary of how to get a username and login to the website so you can participate in the conversation.

Conversations are best had between specific people.  Your username gives you an identity on the website, an alter ego if you will.  When you post a comment, someone else can comment on what you said by referring to you by name.  This makes the internet more like real life.  (See Ellie’s response to Freddie regarding Spin Into Control.)

In addition to giving you an alter ego identity, we’re also expecting that the username will help keep the spammers out of the comments section.  Why try to keep spammers out?  Because we really dislike spam (the computer type – the jury is still out on the canned product), and we want to keep BouncebackCafe.com as free of objectionable material as possible.  Admittedly, there are lots of different methods for keeping spammers out.  The problem with many of these methods is that there is something of an “arms race” going on between spammers and those trying to create fool-proof methods of stopping them.  The spammers keep finding ways to defeat the challenges.

Because of this constant escalation, we decided upon a simpler method, creating usernames and requiring logins before commenting.  The very nature of signing up for a username, and needing to respond to the email we send you creates a more difficult environment for spammer “robots”, the programs that troll the internet looking for places to leave their advertising messages.  Hopefully it makes the effort involved greater than the spammers are willing to exert.  Sort of like keeping all your home’s doors and windows locked: you can’t, within reason, make it impossible for someone to break in, but you can make it harder than the other houses on the street and hope the burglar chooses easier pickings.

How Do I Register?

On the left-hand side of any of our webpages, there’s a place labeled “Login”.  Just below the boxes for username and password is a link called “Register”.  Clicking on that displays a registration form:

1 – You may choose any username you’d like (as long as it hasn’t already been taken).  The username will be how you’ll be known to the world when you comment on BouncebackCafe.com.

2 – Your  email address has to be a valid email address so you can receive the confirmation email we send you.

3 – Your  password can be made up of letters and/or  numbers, must be at least 6 characters long, and is case sensitive.

4 – Re-enter your  password – this is done to help avoid typing mistakes.

5 – Please read the Operating Policies.  They explain what you may and may not do on the website, our responsibilities to you, and the rights we reserve.

6 – After you’ve read the Operating Policies, acknowledge reading them by clicking on the checkbox.

7 – When you’ve finished filling out the form, click the “Register” button, and you’ll see the following screen:

You’ve Got Mail

You now need to check your email for a message from us with the subject “Welcome to the Bounceback Cafe”.  We send out the email immediately after you click “Register”, so if it does not show up shortly you may need to check that it wasn’t blocked as spam by your internet service provider or your email software.

The Welcome email will show your username, password and include a link.  Click on the link in order to complete the registration process.  When you do that, you will be prompted to sign in to BouncebackCafe.com.  And that completes the registration process.  Once you have successfully registered, you will be able to comment on any and all articles on the website whenever you login.

We hope we’ve cleared up some of the difficulties you may have experienced in the past.  We LOVE your feedback and look forward to hearing from you soon!