BabyMed Technical Info
Below we've listed the common technical questions we've received and some information that might help.
Adding a ticker to your community forum post
- Cookies: If you think you understand cookies from the news media, think again - read this.
- Why can't I upload images to the forum or change my Avatar?
- The chat window opens and then nothing happens...what's wrong?
- Why doesn't my browser remember my password?
- I can't ever remember my password...how can I change it?
- I had entered some data in my chart and then I went away for a while and when I came back my changes were lost...what happened?
- How do you protect credit card information?
Adding a ticker to your post
a. Go to eTickr.com and create your own individualized ticker
b. Highlight and copy the code of the ticker into memory (Ctrl-C : highlight the code and press the control key and the letter "C" at the same time)
c. Go to your Membership page then go to "My Signature & Ticker"
d. Paste the code from memory into the Ticker Code field (Ctrl-P)
Cookies
Cookies are text data, not programs. There is nothing in them that can perform any task or function, harmful or otherwise, directly on your computer. There are three (3) types of cookies used on the internet:
Session Cookies: These are meaningless random-generated strings of characters that the server generates and gives to your browser along with the web page when your browser makes a request. The browser returns this same data with each subsequent request to the server. The server matches your IP address and this bit of data to it's internal list, and can determine from that match that a series of requests all belong to the same requestor. This is how the server can remember the information you input on one screen and show it on another. Session cookies are NOT saved on your hard drive. They only exist in your browser's memory, and when you close your browser they are gone. Session cookies are always safe to allow.
First-Party Cookies: These are more permanent bits of data, and may include email addresses or other bits of information that may be used when you come back to the site at a later time to either log you in automatically or configure your session based on choices you made in your last visit. First-party cookies ARE stored on your hard drive. When your browser makes a request to the server, it looks to see if it has a valid cookie to include in that request, and if it does it sends it along so the server may recognize you. Data in first-party cookies are not spy-ware, since they can't be read by any other website other than the one that created it to begin with. First-Party cookies typically are safe to allow, since they can only help the website that sets them serve you better or more effectively or help you find things easier. You can block them, but be aware that this may cause some websites not to work as expected.
Third-Party Cookies: These are the ones the media gets so fired up about, unfortunately the media often fails to differentiate between these and the other two types of cookies, leading to a misinformed public. Third-party cookies are bits of data sent back to your computer along with the page you requested like first-party cookies above, with an important difference: they are intentionally coded so that a different website can read them. In fact third-party cookies can't be read at all by the server that creates them...only by the website that is identified in them. For example, let's pretend you are visiting the website of XYZ Publishing...they may set a third-party cookie for a very popular book-selling website. Days or weeks later, when you visit the very popular book-selling website, the cookie is sent to them, and from the information included, they may know you have an interest in books by that publisher, and may show content that's relevant, such as a list of books or an ad for a book from that publisher. Sounds reasonable enough, eh? Well that may have been the idea when third-party cookies were invented, but the abuse side of these cookies comes when a whole bunch of loosely-related websites or websites of affiliate companies each give your browser a whole batch of these cookies all at once and each of them can be read by one of the other websites. Laden with these, you surf around to the various sites and each visit they all update all the cookies with new ones, and record where and when they saw you, and if all of these different websites forward that data to a central server, comparisons and correlations can be made about you, your browsing habits, what times of day you usually are on the web, and what you like to look at. This may all lead to nothing more than fine-tuning what banner ads you see on various websites, but the potential is there for much more intrusive analysis. Given this, most often it is recommended that you configure your browser to block third-party cookies specifically, and NOT necessarily ALL cookies. You may not even know that websites have any relationship, but the commonality might be that they all use the same advertising service to present ads on all their pages. If you visit 10 otherwise unrelated websites that all use the same ad service, it's the ad service that can put the pieces of data together.
Uploading Images
Images in forum and Avatars must be JPG format, must be small files, less than 500K for images in forum, and less than 5K for Avatars. Firewalls, proxy servers on a network, and other network features my prevent uploading. Try turning off or bypassing these things and if it works you'll know what was interfering.
Chat Problems
Clever Chat is a Java based client that must be able to establish a sustained connection to the chat server. Firewalls, Proxy servers, and other network features may prevent this connection. Clever Chat only runs on windows-based computers using the latest version of Microsoft Internet Explorer. This is primarily due to the inability of other browsers and operating systems to properly handle the interaction between the java-based connection and the content window. If and when these others get their act together, they will be supported by Clever Chat.
Passwords
For your security, only your email address is 'remembered' using a first-party cookie (see above for info about cookies). If you've checked the box to remember the email address, and your browser doesn't pre-fill the box for you, check your browser settings and firewall and privacy manager to ensure they all allow first-party cookies. If any one of them does not, that will prevent this feature from working.
Changing your password is easily done. Once you're logged in, click My Profile and there are fields there where you can type in a new password. If you forget what that is, the login screen has a choice to email your password to you. For this reason, we strongly recommend that you always make sure that we have your correct email address in your profile. We will NOT be able to recover passwords if you change your email address and don't update your record!
Sessions
Sessions only last about 15 minutes from the time of your last page request, so if you walk away for longer than that, the session will terminate, even if you leave the browser window open. Save your work if you have to step away for a while.
Security
We only collect credit card and billing information from you at the moment it's needed for a transaction, all such information is transmitted over encrypted SSL, and none of it is stored anywhere. The credit card and billing information is passed in real time directly to the processor for the card you entered (Visa, MasterCard, etc.) and they return to us a separate and unique transaction number and an approval code, neither of which can be used to exploit your credit card in any manner. We don't store any of your credit card or billing information, as we have no need for it once the transaction is complete.
