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How to Make BookCrossing Work for You!

Having trouble with the site? 10 Support Team tips to help you out!
by bcsupportteam
August 2, 2005
Daily, your erstwhile Answer team on the BookCrossing Support Staff hear the woes, complaints and compliments of our BookCrossing family. With over 382,000 members worldwide, a number of questions reoccur. So, in an effort to help you better navigate the site, we have compiled the following "Top Ten" problems and possible solutions. This is not to discourage you from writing us, but may save some time and prevent frustration. And we all know that time saved means more time for BookCrossing! PS: just a reminder, too, that our frequent questions link (found under the link for "home" on the left of the page and TexasWren's site Wren's Crossing have a lot of frequently asked questions and the answers to them.

1. Can't make a journal entry? The site keeps bouncing you? Your clever comment for the forum won't be accepted? Can't find the article you wrote and now want to edit? It may sound silly, but check to see if you are really logged in. Many times, particularly if on a computer with multiple users, members are logged out and don't even realize it. To verify that you are logged in, check the upper right corner of the screen. It should say "(your BookCrossing name), you're logged in." and give a link to log out. If it doesn't say this, there will be a place for you to enter the email address you signed up with and your password. Enter both and then click the go button. You should then be logged in. If it doesn't work, retry, making sure to type the address and password correctly. (Remember: your BookCrossing name may be clever, lovely and unique, but you don't need it to log in.)

Don't remember your password? No problem. Simply type your email addy into the field and click go. Our system will automatically send you your password.

If you don't remember what email account you used to sign up for BookCrossing, then you will need to contact support so that we can help you out. We will, for security reasons, try to verify that you are the owner of the account, so please be nice when we ask you to give us further information to help verify that you are you, and not your ex-girlfriend or boyfriend or spouse trying to muck up your account. (Yes, those attempts have happened. Trust us.)

2. Okay, so you did all of that, but still can't get the site to behave. In fact, now, the Supply Store isn't even secure. Remember the old saying about "Say anything you like about me in the paper, but just be sure to spell my name right?" Well, the same holds true for BookCrossing. Look at the URL on your browser. It should read http://www.bookcrossing.com. The "s" only appears twice in our name, and then side by side to spell the "crossing" part of our name. We are not about multiple books or multiple crossings, or other variations on that theme. While Ron is a clever fellow and purchased many URLs similar to http://www.bookcrossing.com, and each of these sites is a mirror site, there is only one real article. We have alpha and beta sites for testing as well. Unless you are at the correct URL, the site may not work properly for you. (As a side note, there are also non-English mirror and support sites that are not operated by BookCrossing, but by BookCrossers who speak that language. If you have a problem on those sites, our Support Team can't help you. You have to contact the site owner.)

3. You're not getting PMs. Far and away, the main reason for not receiving PMs is that the messages are being trapped in your spam filter. If there is ever a major site problem, we will post in the forum as soon as we become aware. The other things to check are that your email address in your profile is 1) valid, 2) the one you are actually checking and using and 3) spelled correctly. If you're still having a problem, let us know and we'll try our best to help you figure out why.

4. Not getting The BookCrossing Newsletter, or the toggle keeps changing back to the "no" option in my profile and you want to receive the Newsletter. It seems some of our members with certain mail services have been having problems receiving the Newsletter because that particular service is blocking mail from us for some reason. Maybe they think it is spam because of the volume...hard to say. However, here's a forum post about various Newsletter issues.

A handful of helpful hints for both improved PM and Newsletter receipt are:

  • Make sure you have all the BookCrossing "email addresses" in your Contacts, so it knows you *want* email from that domain. Here are the actual addresses you can put in your contacts. (Substitute the @ symbol for AT):

    • privatemessenger AT bookcrossing.com for private messages

    • ReleaseAlertsNOREPLY AT bookcrossing.com

    • JournalAlertsNOREPLY AT bookcrossing.com

    • info3 AT bookcrossing.com and support2 AT bookcrossing.com

    • newsletterbounce AT bookcrossing.com


  • Also, some email applications actually let you create a "white list" to accept email from listed addresses. Take advantage of that.

  • When you send a PM, always copy yourself. It's an easy way to do "quality control" and see if you're getting any mail from BookCrossing.

  • One Support Team member says, "When I think I might be having PM problems (not to be confused with PMS problems, cause I have those too), I put a note first thing on my profile. . .'cause it makes me sad to miss out on PMs!"


If you have already checked all that and are still not receiving the
Newsletter, consider gathering more info about your particular
service provider and send it to us via support. Then we can see if we can find a pattern. Please be patient with us as we try to identify and fix the issue.

5. Please add East Everywhere (or North Nowhere or Simply Somewhere) to the locations list for members. Our first reaction to these requests is often to scratch our heads and say, "but it's there!", and most of the time, it is. Often the person making the request is spelling the name of the town, city or country wrong, or they are using an abbreviation instead of the full spelling of the location, or even an authorized, but alternative spelling of the name. Oftentimes it is part of a political issue, such as some of the regions of Spain- are they Basque or Spanish? In those cases, we leave the solution to one of our local BookCrossers who has agreed to take on the task of sorting out local locations. Most of the time, we rely on a single common source for geography- we could tell you what it is, but then we'd have to harm you- and if it's not there, we won't make a new listing.

Fine, but what about the UK? Why don't you have (insert Country of your choice) as a separate country? Why do we have to all be lumped under UK? It's simply not proper! Once again, we turned to our local sources for help with this. Our current database allows for 3 slots in a location: country, province or state, and then town or city. The UK's unique makeup put that system in a tizzy. One of our fabulous BookCrossing volunteers took on this monumental task, and has written about it here. We'll refer all your concerns on UK locations to him.

6. Trying to make an entry on a pre-numbered label and get a message that it is not in the database Ooooh- that is frustrating! Those pesky pre-numbered labels just misbehave sometimes, and all our scolding hasn't done any good thus far. We recommend two things when dealing with pre-numbered labels. First of all, if you do get that message, make sure you've typed in the number correctly. Once you've verified that it is not human error (perish the thought!), then show that database you are smarter than it is and click "go" again. It may take a time or so, but you should get the screen that allows you to fill in the book information and register your book. Keep in mind that for pre-numbered labels, it does seem a little backward, but unlike when you register a book the "regular" way, you already have the BCID, so you can skip the registration step and go straight to the information entry step. In other words, the number is already in the system, so rather than registering the book (which would generate a new BCID), you journal it. But the system still wants to be able to link a book title/author and basic information with the BCID, so you are asked to enter the book details. The prompts should come up if you enter the BCID from the label on the journal entry page, to ask you to enter the book details (ISBN or author/title/category).

Once this is in, you will get an automatically generated note, under your BC name, saying that a pre-printed label was used. You can either edit that note to make your own first journal entry or make a second entry with the information you want in the journal.

The second recommendation we have is that if you choose to use the pre-numbered labels for wild releases, that you activate them yourself, so that finders aren't frustrated by the (Ron, put your fingers in your ears, please) temperamental system. Imagine finding a book in the wild, finding BookCrossing, going to journal on it (and maybe join this cool site) and getting an error message. Sigh.

7. Can't believe you are the only registered BookCrossing member in your location. Where is everyone?! First thing we'd ask you to do is take a look at your profile and how you have set that up. Have you typed everything correctly? Remember, there's no need to use punctuation, such as commas, or abbreviations when entering your city, province/state, or country. Adding those, or abbreviating, will create a whole new place in the database. The computer is smart, but doesn't recognise that unique spellings or abbreviations are really all the same place. New York City may be called "The Big Apple", but our database doesn't know that. Sorry.

Also, look to see if you have added any extra code (such as text color or font type) in your profile info for screen name or any of the location spots. Yes, it does make your page prettier, but it really messes up sorting for the database. Please refrain from altering those basic areas of text. Thank you.

8. You wrote to support for help and never got an answer!!! First of all, please accept our apologies. We have a policy of trying to answer all emails within 36 hours, but we are human, and do have lives outside of volunteering for BookCrossing, and sometimes, though rarely, that interferes with our ability to get back to you immediately. But we do try to answer all emails, no matter how hungry our families go, within that 36-hour time frame. Sometimes our message didn't get through to you because of a spam filter on your end, or occasionally, because our Support Message system went on the fritz.

One more thing...if you are corresponding with a specific support person, the best way to keep the conversation going with that person is to simply hit "reply-to". Re-submitting the issue again or with your response will most likely send the issue to another team member, as the system assigns us the issues in a round-robin fashion. Usually, we can figure out who you were talking to before, but it might shave a little time off your reply if you keep talking to the same person about the same question, rather than re-explaining everything each time.

9. There are no pictures in the supply store. How do you expect me to decide if I want something if I can't see it? And the link for making Donations to the site doesn't work either!!! Sigh. You are right. The Supply Store program is not one that was written by Ron, so we all feel better griping about it. When there is a lot of traffic at the store, sometimes the pictures disappear. Even more disastrous, some of the links for things like donations and gifts disappear. There is a quick solution to this, but we need to be alerted that the pictures or the links are gone. Just let us know, and we'll get them back up pronto!

10. How do I leave BookCrossing? This is the question that makes us the saddest. We hate to see you go, but understand that sometimes it is necessary. It is perfectly fine if you want to keep your account (and your screen name and all your books), but turn off the ability to receive PMs and the Newsletter and go dormant for a while. But, if you really need to delete your account, the Support Team can do that. We may ask for verification or clarification that it is what you are asking. Any books listed under your name will switch from your name to AnonymousFinder and be listed in that account. In addition, your BC screen name will become available and could be used by another BookCrosser.

Are you sure you want to delete this item? It cannot be undone.