NOD News

In the past week, the website has been experiencing problems with logging in, incorrect password resets and frequently timing out.

We are happy to announce that these issues have finally been resolved now, and everything should be working normally again.

We apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused.

The website is currently experiencing frequent downtime issues, which often result into a 503 timeout error when e.g. trying to login to your account, use the "forgot password" function or some other parts of the website.

We are working with our server provider and are trying to resolve this issue as soon as possible. If you expierence issues with the website, feel free to try again at a later time. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.

We are also aware that the "forgot password" function is not working properly in regards to the actual password reset. Due to these timeout issues, we can't work on fixing this issue until the timeouts are resolved first. 

Due to vacation, the general & membership administration, and the webmaster departments will be unavailable between Sunday, July 8 and Tuesday, July 17.

Thank you for your understanding.

Undoubtedly, you have heard of the new GDPR privacy regulations which will come into effect on May 25 in the European Union. Privacy on the internet is becoming an increasingly important subject, and it speaks for itself that we at the New Order of Druids value your privacy as well.
 
In order to ensure that your privacy is held to the new and higher standards of GDPR, we have updated our Privacy Policy, which can be found on our website at this link:
 
 
So what changes?
 
Nothing much. Over the past few years, we had already implemented additional security measures and privacy compliances. For example, we have implemented an SSL-certificate for a more secure https internet connection for anyone who visits our main website. We have also already implemented the possibility for members to request their account to be deleted. What did change is that we have cemented this further into our Privacy Policy.
 
The Privacy Policy may seem a very boring and technical text to you, but here are some key points you should know in relation to your privacy on our website:
 
- We never sell any of your information to advertisers or other companies! Any information you provide about yourself, is solely intended for the use of the services our website has to offer.
 
- The information we have of you is the information you provide us in your profile. You can access this by going to your profile and/or account settings on the website. You can now also access a page that lists all of your personal data, by going to My Wall > Account Settings (hover) > My Personal Data Overview. The button "Save this page", at the bottom allows you to download your information in PDF format.
 
- You can also change or remove the information in your profile at any time, which means that you are in full control of what information you want to share. Additionally, you will find extensive privacy settings in your profile, allowing you to control which information is or isn't visible to which other members. In all cases, profiles are never visible to non-members.
 
All this was already available to you prior to today, and it will stay like this in order to keep your privacy safe.  In the future, we hope to automate some of the procedures that are currently still handled manually.
 
 
So what do you need to do?
 
If you still agree with our Privacy Policy, you don't need to do anything. Your account will remain available and active. By continuing to use the services of our website, you automatically agree to our updated Privacy Policy.
 
If, however, you do not agree with our Privacy Policy, you can ask us to have your account removed. Instructions on how to request an account deletion can be found here (make sure you are logged in first before clicking the link):
 
Or go to My Wall > Account Settings (hover) > Delete My Account.
 
 
We hope that we have properly informed you about the changes to our Privacy Policy, and we hope you will continue to enjoy our website - knowing that your privacy is safe with us.
 
 
Blessings,
 
New Order of Druids

We are happy to announce that the website of the New Order of Druids is back online, after a week of intensive work on software upgrades.

At first glance, the website will not look very different from before, as the layout remains mostly the same. Nonetheless, the software behind it has gone through many changes and improvements. This has allowed us to resolve some issues. For example, the problems with uploading images to your gallery, have now been fixed, and you can add your photos to your profile's gallery as well as to the Activity Wall.

The largest change is that of the Grove of Dana - Online Druid College, where we have implemented new software that is much more user friendly. The old software is still available too for existing students, as the course progress could unfortunately not be imported into the new software.

If you are an upgraded member who upgraded prior to August 22, 2017, we have good news for you. To compensate for the week's downtime of the website, we offer you a free extension of your upgraded membership for one full month. You don't have to do anything for this, the expiration date has already been corrected for you to one month later. 

Please keep in mind that some minor upgrades will still take place in the upcoming days or weeks. This means that the website might be offline for short times every now and then, although we will try to limit that to an absolute minimum.

We hope you enjoy the renewed website!

As we have informed you before, we have been in the progress of performing software upgrades to improve the website and fix some issues we have been dealing with as of late.As we have informed you before, we have been in the progress of performing software upgrades to improve the website and fix some issues we have been dealing with as of late.

To perform these upgrades, the website will be offline as of Monday, August 21. The upgrades are expected to take up a few days' work at least, so the website will likely be offline during that time, and be back online before the end of the week.

The way the main website looks and works will not change drastically, but there will be major changes in regards to the Grove of Dana online Druid college. We will be switching to a different college software platform that will allow for a much more user-friendly look & feel, a better integration with the main website, and less technical issues. 

Once the website is back online, we will be sending out another email with further information. If you are a student in the Druid College, we strongly recommend to keep an eye out for the email later this week, and read it carefully, as it will contain important information for you. 

As for members who have paid for an Upgraded Membership, we will provide an extension of the upgraded membership duration to compensate for the downtime of the website this week. This will be done automatically when the website is back online.

Thank you for your understanding.

We want to inform you that upcoming Monday, July 3, the website of the New Order of Druids will be temporarily unavailable.

We will be moving the entire website and all its components to a new and updated server, and this will take several hours to complete. We will let you know when the website is back online and operational.

The transfer of the website to a new server is a first step toward much needed software updates, in order to resolve a number of ongoing issues (such as login problems with the college, as some members experience as of late). In the upcoming week, there will be more periods of downtime expected as we continue to perform the needed software upgrades. We will try to keep the downtime to a minimum and will keep you informed about this.

During the downtime of the server and website, you can also follow our progress on our Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/New-Order-of-Druids-231351664626/

 

If you are a frequent visitor of the NOD website, you may have noticed that we've been dealing with some issues and changes in the past few weeks. Most of these issues have been resolved, and some improvements have been introduced. Nonetheless, we would like to inform you about some important upcoming changes. Especially important is the changes we've made to the Activity Wall, so make sure to read this email carefully.


Current changes and updates

We are glad to announce that we have purchased an SSL-certificate for the main NOD website, allowing the website to load with a https-protocol. This means that the connection between your computer and the website is now much more secure. Even though we have not encountered any actual security issues in the past 10 years, we wanted to comply with what is rapidly becoming the current internet standard for trustworthy websites. This https-protocol applies to the main website at www.druidcircle.org as well as the Online Druid College.

In the past few weeks, we have been performing some important software updates. These updates not only provide enhanced security, but also some new features and layout-changes. This is most prominent in the look & feel of member profiles on the website - all your profile information is still on there, but the profile layout itself has had a bit of an overhaul. It is also possible to create your own new discussion groups, which offer a great deal of functionality (see below).

These updates did not come without software issues. Among these issues were login-problems for newly registered members, as well as inoperational profiles and groups. Most of these issues have been resolved, although there are still a few that we are working on. It is, at this time, not possible to upload images to your profile Gallery (linking to external URL's, however, does work), and the Friends Map is currently not operational. We are working on finding a fix for these issues as well.


Switching from the old to the new Activity Wall

In 2013, we introduced an "Activity Wall", which provides some Facebook-like social networking functionality and allows NOD members to easily connect and interact with each other. As part of the aforementioned updates, however, we have switched to a different software for this part of the website. The new "Wall", which is already operational on the website right now, is much more user-friendly, faster, more stable and better integrated than the previous version. However, it is important to know that the change of software does not allow old Wall posts, groups and image galleries to be automatically transferred over. 

You need to keep the following in mind:

  • If you have Activity Wall posts that you want to keep, you will need to re-post them on the new Wall.
  • If you have uploaded images to the gallery associated with the old Activity Wall, they will be removed. Make sure to have copies of all your own pictures. You will be able to repost them by uploading them to the Gallery in your profile. However, the profile Gallery is currently not operational yet and uploads will fail. We will let you know when this issue is resolved.
  • Discussion Groups you have created will be removed. You are able to create a new group though, to where you can copy all your previous information, links, etc... You will find that the functionality of the new group system is much improved.

If you have any of the above data, posts or images that you want to keep, make sure to make a copy of them before April 25, 2017! After that date, the old Activity Wall with its groups and galleries will be permanently removed from the website!

IMPORTANT: the "My Wall" menu link will send you to the new Wall. To find the old Activity Wall with its galleries and groups, go to "Old Wall" in the submenu "My Wall". 

We will be sending another reminder five days before the Old Wall will be permanently removed.


Future changes and updates

The current changes on the website are part of the preparation for a larger software update. This software update will take place when the website is moved to a new, enhanced server. This will probably take place around the beginning of May. When these improvements take place, the website will probably be offline for a few days. We will inform you about this before these changes will take place.

Another important change will come for the Online Druid College. We are planning to change to a different software that allows for an easier and more user-friendly environment for both students and mentors. These changes are at the current time not yet implemented and will probably take place sometime in May. Until then, you can of course continue to use the current college to work on your course(s). We will keep you updated on this as well.


That's it for now. We can't promise you that the website is currently bug-free as there will surely still be some issues popping up that need to be addressed. However, we are making good progress and hopefully everything will be completed in about a month from now. Make sure to pay the website a visit one of these days!

More Articles …

  1. Registration problem resolved
  2. Problem with passwords for new account registrations
  3. Update on website problems
  4. Problems with the website
  5. College course books available again in print!
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