Booking FAQs


Why am I not booked?

OBoE is a manually moderated booking system. As an attendee you fill in your details and press a button to ask the organisers if you can come to the event. Also you 'offer' them money (by cheque or PayPal). The organisers check there are places left and that your details and the money are as needed before they accept your booking.


Why doesn't it say I have paid?

After you have made a Booking Request and Paid Online using PayPal or such, the organisers' administrator still has to do stuff on their side to acknowledge that the payment has arrived, that it is for the right things and that there are still places left and all the other things that they need to check.

If you are not paying online then the booking will not show as paid until they process your cheque or other transaction. The button offering Online Payment may still be displayed.

Only once they have done all this will the booking show as 'paid'.

The event organisers may well accept your booking request before checking for payment. That's down to them


What is an Identity?

A Booking Identity is an alias that allows a registered user to make several separate and extra bookings for the same event for themself and for other people. Such as their mates who don't have internet access.

You can add them in your Profile. Once you have added an alias, don't re-name it for someone else, certainly at least not until the event is over.

Event organisers don't get to see what you called your Identities. They can tell that you have used one but would only refer to it by number if they had to contact you with a problem. Which seems what you would want?


Why ask for my name THREE times?

The organisers need your full, actual, real name for legal purposes like insurance. It's not an issue of whether you care if you are covered by their insurance, it's about the organisers being insured at all. Why you don't want to give them your name? Especially if you are going to pay online or by cheque...

Many people don't use their full name in day-to-day affairs. This is just the name you normally use.

Likewise you may have a nickname that a lot of people know you by. But only some people.



Registration FAQs


How do I register?

On the menu bar, after the FAQ button there is a Register button (assuming you are not logged-in, because if you are logged-in then you've kinda cracked the the whole registration thing, yes?).

EMail?

You will need a good, "healthy" EMail address to register. See all the banners about putting our email addresses in your address book. This is something we've found out is needed for some of the 'free' EMail services, especially HotMail (aka Outlook) and GMail.
HOTMAIL IS A GREAT PROBLEM AS REGARDS MESSAGES JUST NOT GETTING THROUGH. WE CANNOT STRESS HOW MUCH YOU NEED TO WHITELIST OUR EMAIL ADDRESS( below).

Why don't I get a confirmation email with a link to click?

This usual because:
  • You typed in the wrong email address.
  • You or your email service are throwing away the email that is being sent.
    Check your Junk folder.
    DO THIS FIRST: Put oboe_administration@melgir.co.uk, oboe_registration@melgir.co.uk, oboe_service@melgir.co.uk and possibly melgir@mars.speedyservers.com in your Address Book so that it is "white listed".

It didn't work, shall I just do it again?

If you have problems, do not try to register again with a different ID. You will still have the same problem but now with two accounts, and it will be harder for the Site Admins to work out which needs fixing.

Password FAQs


Security

As of 2018-03-01 the way the passwords are stored was changed (improved).
Your 'old' password should still work but a message "Password unencrypted" will be shown when you login.
If you go to Profile and change your password it will be stored in the new format. A message "Password encrypted" will then be shown when you login.
These messages will appear during the transition of users updating their passwords (so forever....)

The OBoE software does not perform any login to such as PayPal. They are separate and have much better security than we can afford or imagine.

Do not use the same password here that you use somewhere else.
This is a site for booking LRP events. Do not use your banking passwords!!!

Forgotten it?

The Registration page also deals with resetting passwords.



GDPR

Data storage

The OBoE website is acting to protect your personal data when you store it for a booking. That data will be encrypted to various degrees in the database to protect the raw data.

You should only access OBoE via an https: address.

However, the data you supply will of course be made available in full to the respective event organisers (who are just certain other users of the OBoE system). That is after all the fundemental purpose of the system, for you to give them information. Their event process may involve them downloading that information for reference offline. That data is then outsite the control of OBoE. If you do not wish to enter particular information into any computer system involved then you should contact the event organisers directly to negotiate the provision of such information via an external medium.

Control of data

Via the Profile page you can control retention and visibility of your data. You can view any booking you have made, delete each set of booking information, or hide it from previous event organisers if you wish to retain it for future events.
If you have no retained booking information you may also choose to delete your user information.

Email

OBoE registration is email based. The email address you use to register will be stored to enable you to recover your password and such actions. Emails may be sent to you which are not encrypted but these are intended not to contain any personal information.

Cookies

OBoE does not use 'cookies' to store any user or personal information. OBoE does use 'session variables' to store registered user authorisation information.


Device FAQs


Which devices are best for OBoE?

You should where possible use a full-on desktop machine with a modern browser.
Things may work okay on some powerful tablets.

There are some big input sections involved when using OBoE.
They use features that might not work as we'd hope in browsers that aren't "good enough".
We considered putting a lot of effort into working around this on all the many different mobile phones and random things people might want to use.
We decided just to tell you not to try. Use a real computer!



General


Like your own instance of OBoE?

Send me an EMail. I'll give you a copy of the source code under a fairly open licence.



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