What happened to my account?

So you had an account on the old site, but you can’t login to the new dashboard?

There’s a pretty good reason why, so bear with us. Because we’ve put a new system in place, we had to start from scratch in terms of the user accounts. True, we had a lot of user accounts from the old site, but to carry them across to the dashboard, it would have involved doing and being able to do several things.

We would have had to create new accounts for all of you - even for those who maybe don’t want any. And if we did that, we would have had to choose passwords for you. We couldn’t keep your old passwords, because that would have meant that we knew what they were - which we didn’t. We did then, and we do now, keep everything encrypted. So, all that’s happened is that your old accounts remain secure in our database, and after the appropriate time period has passed for data protection (seven years), they’ll be destroyed. But, that doesn’t mean you can’t create a new account on our site, just that you can’t use your old one.

If anything, it’s better, because you can choose a username now, and you can make it as wacky as you want. We’re always trying to streamline and make things easier, but bringing over the old accounts just wasn’t possible.

Fret not, though, because making an account on the new system is well worth it, super easy, and will actually allow you to do things (unlike the old site, which just added you to our mailing list). I mean, we’ll do that when you register now, too, but you can actually use member features as well, all of which were detailed, and will be detailed in other blog posts.

What is it about writers and typewriters?

I just wanted to take a minute to let you guys know that it’s not a screw up. Your old data is safe and encrypted, and will be deleted from our database when we’re able to it. For now, just head over to the new site, click My Dashboard in the header, and meander through the steps to see our awesome competition line up. Which, did we mention, is awesome.

And… There’s more on the way - we just need you to tell us what it is.

Expect the first content posts to come over the weekend, starting at the point that all things should start: the beginning. Unless you’re starting media res, that is. But, we’ll get to that in due course.

See you then,

Dan