Registering an Attempt

[Bob]

For those who wish to attempt the BGR and are also considering applying for club membership there's a bit of a gotcha in the registration process.

The form has several anti-spam measures, these are deliberately "behind the scenes" so as not to give the spammers any clues on how to bypass them. Currently the spam submissions outnumber genuine ones by a ratio of about 2.5 to 1. But there's a series of events that means genuine registrations also fail to get through. I see all submissions through the form so can see what's going on.

The "false positives" come about following a specific sequence that you may not realise you've done.

1. You use Chrome as your browser
2. You have auto-fill turned on (the default)
3. At some point in the past you've filled in a form which also asked for your phone number, this could be any site and at any time in the past.
4. You register for a round.

The solution is to either use a different browser, generally if you are using Chrome you've installed it yourself so there's another available. Or you can turn off auto-fill by going to the settings page "chrome://settings" in the address bar, select "show advanced settings" at the foot of the page and look for the section heading "Passwords and Forms". Now make sure that the "Enable Auto-fill" option is un-checked. One point to note while you are here is if you click the "Manage passwords" link you are able to see all passwords in plain text - a bit of a security hole if you share your computer!

If you've done everything correctly then following registration you will receive a confirmation email. This may take a few minutes to come through depending on how either your ISP or your email client is email set up. Some email clients may see it as spam.

[Bob]

A bump for this piece of advice as I'm seeing a few false positives.

[JanSoLo]

Hiya bob, has my registration registered. Janson Heath, May 23rd 1900 clockwise? I've not had confirmation and sent a few emails

cheers

janson

[Bob]

Hi Janson,

Yes you are registered - you originally registered last December and you updated your start time a few days ago. The registration came through OK at my end so if you didn't receive a confirmation email, check your spam folder in case your email client has "helpfully" put it there. You can register again if you want, I'll see it's a duplicate and won't add it to the system.

[JanSoLo]

Ok many thanks