The Vegetarian Cycling & Athletic Club
(Established 1888)

Yahoo Group - for all veg*n athletes

Home Page: http://sports.groups.yahoo.com/group/vegetariancac/

Join VCAC Yahoo Group

What is the VCAC Yahoo! Group

Yahoo provides a free service for people to use. They are able to provide it as a free service because each page has advertisements. The Groups facility allows you to set up a secure online user group. In our case the group has been set up as a private group for VCAC members and other interested sporty Veg*ns. Before you can join any group you first have to register to obtain your own unique Yahoo ID and set up your own individual account preferences.

The home page for UK groups is here: http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/

If you want to have a more detailed explanation of the system go to this page and click on "help".

Registering for a Yahoo! user account.

You can start the registration process at the above page by clicking "Sign Up" in the login area at the right. After accepting the terms and conditions of the agreement you will need to enter your personal details along with a Yahoo ID (You can make up any unique ID) and the password you would like to use. Unless you want to create a new email address uncheck the Yahoo! Mail box. Yahoo is a big and well-known free service and it takes security issues fairly seriously. I have not had any problems with receiving junk mail as a result of using the service.

Complete the registration process and make sure to note down the YahooID and password. For security reasons you will often be asked to re-enter your password, particularly if you wish to change any of your account details.

To verify the email address you have supplied an email will automatically be sent to it. You must click on the verification link in the email (or copy and paste it into your browser address bar) to complete the registration process.

Set up your Profile

Now that you've got you account started you will be able to login from just about any Yahoo page. Before signing up for the group it is probably best to check the set-up of your personal account details. Associated with your account is your default user Profile. The Profile contains information that is available for others to see when you join the Group. It is possible to create several profiles if you are a user of other Yahoo Groups, but for just joining the VCAC group the single default profile will do. You can add a photo to the profile, and control whether or not your email address is made visible.

Joining the Group

Now that you have your Yahoo ID and have edited your Profile you are ready to join the group.

First, go to the home page for the VCAC Group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vegetariancac/

Have a read of the page, then click on the prominent Join button.

You will need to fill in this last page to join the group. In the message box type in a short message giving your name and if you are a VCAC member or not. We reserve the right to refuse membership to anyone who fails to give their true name.

It is a good idea to select how you would like to receive messages once you have joined the group, although you can change any of the options once you have joined.

The options are:

  • individual emails
  • daily digest (All the emails for each day are combined into one message.)
  • special notices (Choose this if you only want to receive official announcements from the Club Committee.)
  • no email (This means you can log-in to the group at your convenience and read all the latest mail online.)

You will have to wait a short time once you have made your membership request to allow one of the group moderators to approve your membership.

Using the Yahoo Group

Once your Group membership has been enabled I suggest bookmarking the VCAC Group homepage in your browser Favourites so that you can easily navigate straight to it and then log in.

The main feature is the Messages utility, which works like a mini Forum combined with an email inbox. You can post new messages or reply to previous messages online as you would with a Forum. Additionally, and this is how it most often gets used, you submit a message by emailing directly to the group email address. If you have your preferences set up to receive email (see above) then any messages sent to the Group will be emailed directly to you, as well as being added to the Message section.

There are also sections for storing pictures and documents, creating links and viewing a list of members and their Profiles.

I would also recommend setting up an email filter within your own email program. This enables you to redirect all the VCAC group email into its own folder. This considerably simplifies the upkeep of your inbox. If you are not sure how to do this ask for further advice once you have joined the group.

This may all sound like a lot of work but in reality it should only take you a few minutes to sign-up if you are a regular Internet user. If you are new to the Internet don't hesitate to ask for more help with any feature that you don't understand. Once you have all your user preferences set correctly the account requires very little maintenance.

Max d'Ayala, July 2005.
Updated January 2007, March 2010