Q: Why should I register?

A: Registering enables you to comment on articles and post on the forum. We’ll also send you an occasional email newsletter containing craft news and special offers (though you can unsubscribe if you don’t wish to receive this).

Q: I have an old “Crafts on the Net” profile set up for the Practical Publishing website. Will this continue to work?

A: That profile will continue to work on the Practical Publishing website. For this new Crafts on the Net website, you’ll need to register for a new Crafts on the Net user account. It’s free and will only take a couple of minutes.

Q: I registered but I haven’t received the email containing my password.

A: It should only take a few minutes at most for your confirmation email to arrive. If it hasn’t appeared in your inbox after a short while, it’s worth checking your spam filter to see whether it has ended up in there by accident. If it’s not there either, the email may have gone astray or been blocked somewhere along the way. In that case we’d suggest clicking the Forgotten Password link on the login screen; this will generate a new password and email it to you.

Q: The password I received is really complicated!

A: It’s deliberately complicated, to protect your account. We suggest cutting-and-pasting it from the confirmation email you’ve received into the login screen, as that way there’s no chance of mistyping it. The good news is that if you tick the Remember Me box on the login screen, you won’t need to enter it again on that computer, because the website will remember you.

Q: Why have you split Crafts on the Net away from the Practical Publishing website?

A: To make things easier for everybody! Practical Publishing remains the definitive source of information on your favourite craft magazines. You can also take out or manage subscriptions to our craft magazines there, buy back issues, or take advantage of other special offers in our Practical Publishing shop. Here at Crafts on the Net, you can keep up with the latest crafty news and participate in our active crafting community.

Q: The colour scheme makes it hard for me to read the pages.

A: Whilst we’ve gone to great lengths to try to ensure Crafts on the Net is easy to use for everyone, we recognise that some colour combinations can cause problems for some users. The good news is that modern web browsers enable you to turn off all layout styling on any web site you’re having difficulties with. In Internet Explorer 8, click the Page drop-down menu, then choose Style… No Style. In Firefox, click the View drop-down menu, then choose Page Style… No Style.

Q: I use Internet Explorer 6 and some of the pages on this website look strange. What can I do?

A: Our statistics show that nowadays only a very small percentage of web users use Internet Explorer 6, which is now more than 8 years old and has serious performance and security flaws. As a consequence, when creating Crafts on the Net we took the decision not to plough time and resources into supporting Internet Explorer 6. If you’re still using Internet Explorer 6 you may find some pages look rather odd. The site should still work, but we strongly recommend you upgrade to a more modern Web browser, such as Internet Explorer 7 or 8 (free downloads from Microsoft) or Mozilla Firefox. Upgrading will make your web browsing experience safer and more enjoyable.

Q: How do I upload pictures to the forum?

A: Click Reply To Post (bottom of the conversation, on the right). Click the Insert/Edit Image icon (it looks like a little tree). Click the Browse icon, then select the Upload tab and click the Browse button. Select your file and click Upload.
After a few seconds you should be told your file has been successfully uploaded. Switch back to the Browse tab and then select the file you’ve just uploaded from the list. Finally, click the Insert button.

Please note, there’s a limit on the file size of the images you can upload, which is 50KB. That’s to stop people uploading enormous images which take an age to be displayed to other users. If you don’t have image editing software (such as Photoshop Elements) installed on your PC then the easiest way to resize pictures is to use a website such as http://www.picresize.com or http://www.shrinkpictures.com/ – just follow the instructions on the screen and then save the resized image back to your computer so that you can upload it as described above.

Q: I’ve still got a problem or a question that isn’t answered above.

A: Please email webmaster@practicalpublishing.co.uk and we’ll do our best to help.