You will need a new password for this site as all passwords were encrypted for security on our previous site and we can not transfer them to this one. But don't worry, it's easy to get your new one.

First

click the "request new password" link under the login block. If the email address you enter is on our database, you will be emailed a new one very shortly - you might need to keep an eye on your spam folder if it doesn't show up in your Inbox. If the email address is not found, try a different one until you find a match. (If you have any of our newsletters on file, the email address we send those to is likely to be the right one.)

If this does not work:

• If you have content on the site (e.g. a directory listing, an article, shopping history or are subscribed to our newsletters) you will lose links to manage these if you create a new account. Use the contact form to contact us. Tell us your first and last name and any email addresses you might have provided, and we'll get you sorted.
• If you do not have any content on the site and are not a subscriber you can simply register again, by clicking the "Create new account" link under the login block.

It was a huge decision for us to decide to change to this new site, but we felt there were so many benefits we couldn't not do it. But that left us with over 25,000 user records and data collected over more than 10 years, to migrate to the new site.
For the less technically-minded, if you imagine each bit of data sitting in a container on the old site, the challenge was that the structure of the new site required more, and different, containers.
We've done our best to import the records with the least leeway for error - but there are bound to be some gremlins.
If you've found one, we'd be happy to help get rid of it. Use the contact link on the main menu to tell us what's up. The more specific the information you can provide, the sooner we can get it sorted.

While we provide several ways to subscribe to or unsubscribe from our newsletters, and to manage your preferences, this data is linked to your user account.

If you want to change it, make sure you are logged in, and click "My details" in the middle column under your username. Click the edit link which appears at the top of your user account, and then "Subscription management". Select your preferences and save.

Links to unsubscribe from the mailing list are included in all our newsletters.

Yes, we've provided some fantastic ways for you to promote your business on Bizbuzz - but in order to make the site a pleasant place for everyone to enjoy, we also have some rules. People who do not follow the rules may have content removed, or even be banned.

What you can do:

• Create a profile for yourself which tells people about who you are, your interests, etc. When you create content or participate in certain areas of the site, a link is automatically created to your profile.
• Create a directory listing for your business which tells people about your business, and the products and services you offer. (A premium directory listing will allow you to provide more information than a free basic listing). Your listing will be shown on your profile, but may also appear in other places on Bizbuzz.
• Add a short signature to your details which will show in places like the forums when you post something.
• If your business is a multi-level or network marketing business, you may promote the products and services, but not the business opportunity itself.

What you can't do:

• Promote any specific multi-level or network marketing business, franchise, affiliate scheme, joint venture or business opportunity. Your content will be deleted and you could be banned.
• Spam other members of the site in any way, including by email and through comments or posts on their profile or wall.
• Overtly promote your business in content other than your directory listing.
• Be a nuisance to other users.

See our terms of use for more detail. As the Internet changes, our rules need to change to keep up so they may change from time to time. The purpose will always be to make the site business-focused, useful and friendly without overtly pushy promotion by any user, and without anyone feeling uncomfortable, spammed or pressured.

We make a clear distinction between blogs and articles.

A blog is most suited to expressing personal opinions, discussing issues, providing a "voice" for an individual, and engaging with others. It's about letting your personality show and forming a personal connection with your readers.

An article is more objective, providing "how-to" or similar material to help an audience understand a business-related topic better or achieve greater success in their business. It's all about showcasing your expertise.

Every user on Bizbuzz can have their own blog! You create and publish it as you see fit. (We do monitor appropriate content). All blogs add to the conversations happening in the Community section of the site.

Articles go through a more formal approval process. Our editorial team approve them, make sure they are in the right categories, may edit them and may promote them to the home page. All users are welcome to post articles for consideration. If you successfully apply for a role as a Contributor, the process is quicker and easier - but you don't need to be a Contributor to start writing!

Fantastic!
Once you have registered, you can do so very easily.
Just go to "create content" in the middle column under your username (you'll only see this link when you are logged in).
You'll see a list of the content you can create yourself. Click on "Article", follow the guidelines on the form, and save it when you are done.
Articles may not be published straight away as our editorial team review and approve them.
We welcome objective, editorial contributions from the Bizbuzz community and it's a great way to showcase your expertise.

We've tried to make the editor as easy as possible and, in many places, have provided a Word-like WYSIWYG editor. How it displays and functions may depend on the browser you are using.

If you are having problems with it, the best solution is to copy all your content into Notepad or some other plain text editor (Word adds all sorts of code you can't see but the editor might not like), and then into the editor. You can then  format it using the font and layout options provided.

Please also tell us about the problem, stating which page you were on and which browser you were using. We will do what we can to make this as easy to use as possible.

Our editor has a code-stripping function to get rid of code added by programmes such as Word. Sometimes your copy will disappear altogether when you paste it in. Using the above solution with Notepad should work.

We allow some content to be published straight away, some goes into moderation, some is reviewed before publication and some may be flagged as inappropriate and be temporarily disabled or, if warranted, permanently deleted. Unless it is deleted, the user who submitted it can see it, but the community at large can't.
In some browsers, unpublished material shows up with a pale pink border around it.
Our editorial team may also choose to promote certain content to the front page of the site (usually articles), or to schedule them for publication on a particular date.
If your material has not been published within 3 working days, please feel free to follow up with us.

Adding your profile to Bizbuzz will enable your information to appear in the Members' section of Bizbuzz, or, for instance, in the information displayed about an author.
You need to register first, and be logged in to create your profile.
Simply click the Profile link under Create Content under your username in the middle column. Fill in your details and save the form.
Profiles may be flagged as inappropriated or edited to comply with site policies.

You need to log in to change or delete your profile. Then click "my details" on the menu which appears at the top of the page. Click the "edit" link and a link to your profile will appear underneath it.

Click the profile link to update any information you need to, or delete the whole listing if you wish.

Your profile is different to your basic user account (all registered users have an account, but users can choose to have a profile). You may also want change or delete your user account if necessary.

It is free to list your business in the Bizbuzz directory. You need to register first, and be logged in.

Simply click the Directory Listing link under Create Content under your username in the middle column. Fill in the details and submit it.

Directory Listings may be flagged as inappropriated or edited to comply with site policies.

You need to log in to change or delete your listing. Then click My details under your username in the middle column.

Click the Edit link near your username. A link to your Directory Listing will appear in the line below. Click it and you can update any information you need to, or delete the whole listing if you wish.

This one frustrates us as much as it does you!

Unfortunately the smooth delivery of email may encounter challenges along the way in the form of well-meaning ISPs, spam filters and security/mail management software. All of these are triggered in different ways, and while we do our best to avoid them, it's not always something within our control.

We suggest you do the following:
1. Make sure you have completed the opt-in process. We do not send email newsletters to anyone who has not clicked the link in the email we send out on registration, to confirm a subscription.

2. Check your spam folder.

3. Add our email address thehive(at)bizbuzz.co.nz to your address book

4. Check whether any software on your computer is catching this mail (do you have special folders set up or an alert on the software's dashboard)?

5. Check whether your ISP is intercepting or rejecting the email.

6. Some people find that by setting up another free account, such as a gmail account, they can get around any other problems they are having receiving it.

7. We do have an online version of every email newsletter.

Bizbuzz encourages members of the Bizbuzz community to get involved in the site. We have created a number of roles with special privileges, and we invite you to put your hand up for one or more of them.

All roles help you raise your profile on Bizbuzz.

Currently, roles include:
Contributor - regularly providing quality articles for publication. Contributors bypass some of the editorial red tape and have their content published more quickly and regularly, as well as having access to a text editor with more functionality.

Moderator - helping ensure Forums stay clean, friendly and focussed.

Expert - Experts for a variety of subject areas answer questions on their speciality topic(s). The number of experts per topic is strictly limited.

Event organiser - Event organisers are given the ability to add events directly to the Calendar of Events. Strict criteria apply.

If you wish to apply for a role, go to "My details", and click "Apply for role" at the top of the page.

To add something to your favourites, click the "Add to favourites" link at the bottom of e.g. an article or a blog post.

To remove the item from your favourites, go to "My details", click the item to open it, and click the "Remove from favourites" link at the bottom of the item.

You'll notice we do not publish your email address as this makes it possible for spammers to harvest and abuse it.

Every user, however, has the ability to activate a safe contact form to allow other users of the web site to contact them. If your contact settings have been set to allow a personal contact form, other users will be able to contact you through Bizbuzz without your email address being given to them. Bizbuzz does not see your mail but your email address is protected.

To enable or disable your personal contact form, go to "My details", and click "Edit". Select or unselect the checkbox under the "Contact settings" heading.

There could be several reasons for this. This site is new and it's possible you are encountering a bug we haven't found yet. Please let us know you are having trouble. Letting us know the URLs or pages you were going from and to is very helpful. You can use the contact form on the top menu bar to report this issue. There are times you may be logged out on purpose when you use the browser's back button to ensure security. We understand this is annoying and frustrating and are working to address these issues. Your feedback and patience is appreciated :-)

This is because you have saved content but it is not yet published.

If you click the edit button to go back to the edit screen for the content you have created, you may be able to select a "Publish" option.

We use different levels of moderation for different types of content, so even if you have published the material, it may need to be approved before being publicly available. Our automated moderation system will have alerted an editor to check it out. This process may take a couple of days.

We are still refining and testing this system though, so if it's 3 or more days and you haven't seen the content go live, please feel free to follow up with us.

Listing your email address means that web-crawling robots can "scrape" or "harvest" your email address. Often it is then added to an email list and sold to or used by spammers.

People can still contact you through your personal contact form (see FAQ for how to set this up). This is a safer way to allow other users to contact you.  We discourage you from sharing your email elsewhere on the site (forums, blogs, articles, comments, etc.) as anywhere it appears on a web page it can be picked up as detailed above.

We very definitely don't want this to happen and take all cases of such abuse seriously.

What we can do

Please report such spam to us. If the problem is wide-spread we can ban a user who is repeatedly offending. We have also started off with settings which make it possible for users to contact each other without revealing their email addresses, and we've added some spam protection. We can change those settings so sending emails is not quite so easy (similar to the CAPTCHA maths question already in place). It might take some adjustment to get the balance between easy use and spam blocking right and we can only do this if you let us know about any issues.

What you can do

You can turn your own personal contact form off. This will mean no contact form spam but obviously you will not be able to be contacted by anyone if you do this. If you want to maintain contact, the steps above are probably better for the whole community.

When you first look at the numbers of articles in each category and sub-category, it can be confusing if you're trying to add them up. You will notice that if you add all the sub-category subtotals together, they often don't equal the category total.

This is actually by design. Some articles are loaded into the top-level category without being assigned a sub-category because they may be more relevant to the topic in general than to one or more of the subcategories. Articles which are relevant to more than one category can be indexed in both. The numbers accurately represent the number of articles assigned to that category or sub-category. We suggest you don't try adding them up as you will probably go as scatty as we did when we were testing the site!