How to Create a User Name and Password and #1 hint for writing on Lumigrate

Thanks to Adam Cochran of Talking Digital for making these instructions -- They're also as a Comment on the other start up area but I put them here as well for those that just want to get the first step done. 

1. Create a username that describes yourself or your interest as it relates to Lumigrate. 

• This can be your real name or a made up name.  The OD, Lynn Hellerstein,  who wrote a book she has wanted to tell us about, registered as "Lynn", Deirdre Rawlings goes by her full name.  "Ilene Morgan" is a made up name as the woman who writes as the Cutee-cle Lady wanted anonymity.  "Yenta" thinks she's as big as Oprah so just goes by her first name, and since she's a fictional Yenta written by a real life and younger woman in Florida, we hope you see the point.  You can put your real name or a made up name. 
• I personally find it easier to refer to someone as a 'name' because that is how we are used to referring to people and in the Forums we do refer to each other's names/posts, but you can go by anything you want. You can have more than one account as well.  Many times people want to be identified by name for some things and have confidentiality because they're looking for a job or are wanting to share something very personal.  The only people who have access to the information with the website are Mardy and the website administrator, who we have encrouraged to be in the 'team' area of the home page on 'our team' so that you know who Ron Shimshock is and what his company name is, etc. 

2. Create a complex password. This doesn't mean it has to be hard to remember. Try using numbers and characters instead of letters and change from upper to lowercase. For example, "P455W0rD!"

3. If you are going to write something that takes some time, the website can get 'bored' and then you'll lose what you wrote.  So composing it elsewhere and bringing it in is an option for those things you might create that are lengthy.  Do not write your posts in another word processing software - especially Microsoft Word. Microsoft Word embeds some really weird unseen stuff that will make your post look horrible once it is posted to Lumigrate. 

We found creating something in email, blocking and copying it (and sending it on to yourself if you want to have it 'archived') and then pasting it into the area you want to write in Lumigrate works well. We've also taken things written in Word that we wanted to use and not retype, copied them to email and edited out any formatting (as that's what brings in the nutty character strings that make your entry look wierd).

If you need to run spellcheck, there are two ways:

• above the box you write/read in (above) on the bottom line towards the right, there is ABC (checkmark) to use the one in here, which has some gaps of words, but works okay. or
• click on "Switch to plain text editor" at the bottom under the box that you write your post in. This will turn on your browser's spell checker. Once the post is written, you can click "Switch to rich text editor" to format your post and add photos and links.