Surrey/Hants Borders Branch

Surrey Hampshire Borders Branch is one of the largest CAMRA branches with over 1600 members. It was founded in 1975, the inaugural meeting being held at the Red Lion in Milford.

The Branch covers a large area, stretching over 30 miles along the Surrey & Hampshire Borders, encompassing approximately 500 pubs. The major towns in the areas are Aldershot, Alton, Camberley, Farnborough, Farnham, Fleet, Guildford & Woking.

The Branch runs a beer festival in November every year in Woking and support the Farnham Beerex in April/May, the longest running beer festival held at a single location in the world.

A quarterly Newsletter, News and Ale, is produced with a circulation of 11,500.

Visit the 

CAMRA SURREY BRANCH
SURREY/HANTS BORDERS - GO YAHOO!!

Surrey/Hants Borders CAMRA Email List (YAHOO)

Members of the Surrey/Hants Borders branch of the Campaign for Real Ale (SHB CAMRA) have been using email as a simple and effective way of communicating with each other for several years. At first the social secretary kept a list of members' email addresses and messages were sent via him. In June 2002 a Yahoo! group was set up to allow any member to send to the list directly. Since then membership of the list has grown to over 12% of the branch membership. As well as allowing anyone with an email account to send and receive messages the Yahoo! group allows members with access to the World Wide Web to view the message archive and access photos and other information about branch activates.

This article describes the ways in which branch members can join the group either for full or email only access. The way in which email only access can be converted to full access is also described.

The first section, "Purpose", gives the background to the group and describes the way that it is used.

The next two sections, "Getting a Yahoo! Id" and "Joining shb_camra" describe the preferred way of joining the group for full access.

The section "Signing up for email only access" describes how to branch members without access to the World Wide Web can receive emails receive to the list.

Members who are signed up to receive emails and who then gain access to the World Wide Web can convert to full access by following the procedure in "Converting to full access".

Finally "Other groups of interest" lists some other groups and lists that members may be interested in.

Purpose

Using a Yahoo! group allows any member of the group to send to all other members without needing a middle man to pass messages on. Previously members would tend to gather all the email addresses on messages sent to the list so that they could send messages directly. However this meant that it was very hard to join or leave the group: every member would have to update their own list. With the Yahoo! group there is only one list so updating it is easy.

Good subjects for messages on shb-camra include, but are not limited to:

Late updates or clarifications to the branch diary.
Notice of local events such as pub beer festivals.
Discussion about news that directly affects our area.
Matters not related to beer, pubs, CAMRA etc. should not be discussed. Long discussions about matters that are no more relevant locally than they are nationally should probably be addressed on cask-uk or uk.food+drink.real-ale (see “Other groups of interest”).

Getting a Yahoo! Id

Since access to the shb_camra group is limited to members only, you need to register a user name and password. This user name is known as a Yahoo! Id. If you already have a Yahoo! Id (perhaps because you belong to another group or have a geocities web site) you can use that. If not it will only take a few minutes to set up an Id.

The basic steps to get a Yahoo! Id are:

Visit http://uk.groups.yahoo.com and click on "Sign up now", read and accept the conditions of use.
Fill in a form giving the Yahoo! Id and password you would like and some very basic information about yourself.
Fix any problems with the form you have just filled in (possible problems are described below).
Wait for an email from Yahoo!
To fully activate your Yahoo! Id click on the link contained in the email so that Yahoo! know that you have received the message.
Before you start you will need an existing email account and a web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator). There is believed to be a way of signing up if you do not already have an email account, but this is not discussed here. Any modern computer that is connected to the Internet should have a web browser. If you access the Internet from work it is possible that the firm's firewall will prevent some of this working. In this case you should check with your MIS department that you are not violating your employer's IT policies.

To start enter the following address into the address area of your web browser: http://uk.groups.yahoo.com Look for the words "Sign up now" and click on these. This will bring up a page with the conditions of use. When you have read as much as you can stand click on the "Accept" button at the bottom of the page.
Now comes the main sign up stage. You will be presented with a form which you will need to fill in and click on the button at the bottom of the page.

Yahoo! Id: This is the name that you want to be known by. The name needs to contain just letters (normally lower case only), digits, and underscores ("_").

Password: Choose a password that you can easily remember, but which other people are unlikely to guess. I do not think that this password needs to be very secure, but I suggest that you use a different password from any others that you use (at least different from the password you use for online banking or with online shops that have your credit card details). As the password is not echoed as you type it you have to enter it twice to make sure that you did not mistype it.

Activate Yahoo! email account: One of the added benefits of getting a Yahoo! Id is that you can get an extra email account. This could be quite useful if you want to keep emails to and from shb_camra separate from your regular email. You can access your Yahoo! email even when you are at someone else's computer (like Hot Mail). I suggest that you leave this box ticked, you can always ignore your new email account. If you are sure that you do not want this email account untick the box.

Password reminder details: Just in case you forget your password you will be asked for some extra details that can be used to have a reminder sent to you. Select the main question (e.g. first pet's name), enter your answer, enter your date of birth, and enter you existing email address. You existing email address is required so that Yahoo! can send you a password reminder if required.

Personal details: All Yahoo! groups are paid for by advertising that appear as you access the group. These are not overly intrusive. To help them select which adverts to present to you Yahoo! ask for a little more information about you. This is nothing too personal: just your line of business, country of residence and post code.
Code: This is the strangest part of the form. It is used to prevent people writing computer programs to sign up to hundreds of Yahoo! Ids. A little picture with some badly written letters and/or digits will be shown, simply copy these letters and/or digits into the box provided.

When all of these details have been entered click on the button at the bottom of the page. If there were any problems with the things you entered you will be told what is wrong and asked to correct it. When you have corrected the form press the button at the bottom to try again.

Yahoo! Id: The name needs to contain just letters (normally lower case only), digits, and underscores ("_"). Since this name must be unique you may find that your first choice has already gone. In this case you must choose another Id. One popular way of doing this is to put a number at the end: favourite number, year of birth, etc.

Password: If you did not enter exactly the same word twice you will need to try again. Remember to check that Caps Lock is not on.

Personal information: You need to enter all of this information (Note for geeks: you need javascript enabled to make the drop down lists work).

Once your application has been submitted Yahoo! will send an email to the existing address that you entered. This may take a little while so you might decide to disconnect from the internet and complete the rest of the steps next time you log in. Just make sure that you complete the steps within seven days.
When you receive your simply click the link that it contains to complete your sign up. This step is needed so that Yahoo! can be sure that you have entered the correct existing email address (and are not trying to sign someone else up without them knowing).

Once you have clicked on the link in your email your Yahoo! Id is fully active. If you asked for a Yahoo! email address to be created this will be ready. You can go and explore other parts of Yahoo! that require an Id: MyYahoo!, Geocities, Yahoo! Finance Portfolio, etc. Much more importantly you are now ready to join shb_camra.
Joining shb_camra

Once you have a Yahoo! Id you can get full access to our group. Open your web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator) and enter the following into the address box: http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/shb_camra/ This is the home page of the group, you will often come back here once you are a member, it may be a good idea to bookmark this page.

Look for the button that is marked "Join this group" and click it. If you are not currently signed in you will be asked to enter your Yahoo! Id and password, these are the first two items that you entered when you set up your Yahoo! Id.

Once you are signed in you will be presented with another form. This is much simpler than the one you had to fill in before. The only important bit is a large box about half way down. Please type in a message for us here. We would like to know a little about you: who you are (especially if your Yahoo! Id does not look like your real name); what area of the branch you drink in; what your local or favourite pub in the branch is. If you live out side the branch area we are interested to know why you want to join the group.

You can also change some other aspects of your membership on this form. Do not worry if you do not understand any of this, just leave the settings as they are.

Press the button at the bottom of the form. This will register your request and send an email message to the group's moderators. Since the group is for members only we have to accept your application. We will try to do this as quickly as possible. Please be patient as it may take a couple of days, especially if we are all off exploring breweries elsewhere in the country.

Once we have accepted your application you will receive a couple of emails explaining how to get the most from the group. Once you have received these you are a full member of the group. You will start to receive messages and can visit the home page (http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/shb_camra/) whenever you want.

If you have any problems signing up please send an email to shb_camra-owner@yahoogroups.co.uk or nbanyard@yahoo.co.uk Please try to include a description of exactly what you are doing and seeing. In particular if you get any error messages please try to send us the exact message so that we have the best chance of fixing your problem.

Signing up for email only access

To sign up for email from the group without getting access to the group's web pages send an email to shb_camra-subscribe@yahoogroups.co.uk This message will be passed on to the group's moderators. Since the group is for members only we have to accept your application. We will try to do this as quickly as possible. Please be patient as it may take a couple of days, especially if we are all off exploring breweries elsewhere in the country.

Once we have accepted your application you will receive an email explaining how to post to the group and how to unsubscribe. If you want to temporarily stop receiving emails send a message to shb_camra-owner@yahoogroups.co.uk asking for your email setting to be changed to "No messages". We cannot promise to change the setting immediately, but we will process your request as soon as possible.

If you want to change the address that recieves emails you will need to unsubscribe from your old address and subscribe from your new address.

If you have any problems signing up please send an email to shb_camra-owner@yahoogroups.co.uk or nbanyard@yahoo.co.uk Please try to include a description of exactly what you are doing and seeing. In particular if you receive any error messages please include them in your message to us so that we have the best chance of fixing your problem.

Converting to full access

If you already have email access you can convert to full access.

First follow the instructions in "Getting a Yahoo! Id" above.

Secondly send a message to shb_camra-owner@yahoogroups.co.uk explaining that you want to become a full member. You will then have to wait for a message from us (I do not know how to do this stage automatically).

The message you receive will have a have a button marked "Click here for full access" (or words to that effect). If you are not logged in to Yahoo! when you press this button you will be asked to enter your Yahoo! Id and password. Once you are logged in follow the instructions to complete your conversion.

Other groups of interest

Members of shb_camra may be interested in another Yahoo! group called cask-uk. Once you have a Yahoo! Id you can join this by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cask-uk/ Alternativly send a message to cask-uk-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. Other steps are similar to those described for shb_camra except that the group owner may ask a simple beer related question to prevent mass sign ups by spammers.

Before cask-uk, the main group about real ale was the usenet newsgroup uk.food+drink.real-ale. This group still exists and if you have access to newsgroups is worth subscribing to. If you do not have access to a newsgroup server you can read the group by going to http://groups.google.com/ and entering uk.food+drink.real-ale into the search box.

Finally people actively involved in the organization of CAMRA beer festivals will find the yahoo group camrabf helpful.

Last reviewed and updated 2 January 2007