How to use this site
Registration and logging in
lovemoney.com works best as a logged-in experience. What we mean by this is that most of the features on our site – Q&A, financial product reviews and article, blog and video comments – require you to register with the site. Registration is free, easy and totally confidential – if you haven’t done it yet, register now.
When you register you will choose a username and password. All of your site contributions will be attributed to your username. You can reset your password any time you like, and if needs be you can also change your username. If you forget your username or password you can easily retrieve them through our recovery page.
Please do not be put off by the questions we ask when you register: the information we gather at the time of registration tells us what kind of content you are most likely to find useful and interesting. As we explain in our privacy policy, your data is secure with us and we won’t share it with anyone.
You can also now login with a third party provider such as Facebook and Google+. When you do this you need to give lovemoney.com permission to access some of the basic information held on your third party account, such as email address and profile picture. Using this method means you can quickly be signed into lovemoney.com whenever you visit providing you are also signed in to your third party provider. To do this you will need to click the correct third party icon on the login screen.
Troubleshooting – logging in
Unable to sign in? Here are the most likely suspects:
- your web browser is set to reject cookies: in order to sign in, your browser must be set to accept cookies – we’ll walk you through this below
- you are accessing the site from behind a security measure known as a firewall – adjust your browser security settings to solve this
- the date is wrongly set on your computer – check the time and date and ensure they are correct, and the problem should go away
If you have logged in but the next page will not load, these are the most likely culprits:
- your browser could have the site listed as ‘restricted’ – we’ll walk you through how to fix this below
- you could have a 'cookie wash' programme on and eating up all the cookies served to your machine – in this case you would need to set us up as an exempt site
- the sign in cookie has crumbled, in which case the next best thing is to simply delete the cookie – once you log in again you should be fine
Browser controls – how to fix security issues
Although we will continue to support older versions, one of the easiest ways to keep glitches to a minimum is to be sure you have the most recent version of your browser. If you haven’t yet done so, please upgrade now to the latest version of Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari. Upgrading is always free.
If you are using Internet Explorer 5, 6, 7 or 8:
Open the Tools menu, choose Internet Options, and then click on the Security tab.
If you are using Firefox 3:
Open the Tools menu, and choose Options, then Privacy.
If you are using Safari 4 (PC):
Ensure that the menu bar is active (click on the wheel on the top right of the browser window), then choose ‘Show Menu Bar’.
Open the Edit menu, choose Preferences and then click on the Security icon.
If you are using Safari 3 (PC):
Open the Tools menu, and choose Options.
Privacy and cookie issues – how to fix them
If you are using Internet Explorer 6, 7 or 8:
Open the Tools menu and choose Internet Options
Click the Privacy tab in the window that appears.
You should either see a vertical slider control, or the word ‘custom’. If you see the word ‘custom’, use the instructions for advanced users below.
By default, the slider should be set to Medium, which will enable our cookies to work. Cookies should also work if it is set to Medium High.
Alter the slider setting to whichever of those you prefer and click OK, then close all your open windows, and restart IE.
Advanced Users of IE:
Click on the ‘Advanced...’ button and make sure ‘override automatic cookie handling’ is ticked.
Then tick Accept for both First party Cookies and Third party Cookies. Also, make sure ‘Always allow session cookies’ is ticked.
Click OK to exit the advanced options, then OK again to exit the Internet Options panel. Now close all your open browser windows, and restart IE.
If you are using Internet Explorer 5:
Go to your browser's Tools then to Internet Options and select the Security tab.
Click on ‘Custom level’ and scroll down until you see the section entitled Cookies.
You will see two options for cookie use. One is for per session cookies and the other is for stored cookies.
If you enable them both (make sure there is a black dot by the side of each of them) then the cookies will work and your password will be saved when you tick the little box next time.
If you are using Firefox 3:
Open the Tools menu, and choose Options.
Then click on the Privacy icon and, in the Cookies section, make sure ‘Accept cookies from sites’ is ticked. You can also tick ‘Accept third-party cookies’ although that is not necessary for access to our site. If you want, you can just make an exception for us - click on the Exceptions button, enter lovemoney.com in the top box and then click the Allow button.
If you are using Safari 4 (PC):
Ensure that the menu bar is active (click on the wheel on the top right of the browser window, then choose Show Menu Bar.
Open the Edit menu, choose Preferences and then click on the Security icon.
You can then either choose Always or “Only from sites I visit” from the cookie section.
If you are using Safari 3 (PC):
Open the Edit menu, and choose Preferences.
Then click on the Security icon along the top of the window.
You can then either set cookies to be accepted ‘Always’ or ‘Only from sites you navigate to’.
After all this, if you’re still having no luck, contact us with an explanation of what’s happening and we’ll do our best to help. Please include any error messages you are shown, the information on the diagnose page, and the address of the page you end up on.
Managing your account
Your settings page is the mission control hub for all your account activities – just sign in to get started:
- edit your account details such as your username, email address and password
- edit your email preferences to subscribe to different types of newsletters
- adjust the answers to your registration questions so that content can be more personalised
- edit your Q&A preferences to get an alert whenever your question receives an answer
- change your avatar – this is the icon which appears beside your comments on the site
Your profile page
If you have a username and password, you have a profile page. You can get here by clicking your username or avatar.
Your profile page displays any information you have elected to share about yourself, and it shows your recent activity across the different interactive areas of lovemoney.com – Comments, Q&A and Editorial.
Your personal homepage
When you are logged in and click ‘Home’, you won’t see the regular homepage – instead, you’ll see one we’ve created especially for you. One of the benefits of registration is a personal homepage that’s constantly being re-stocked with the stuff you like most (remember those questions we asked when you registered? They inform this page!).
You can fine-tune the content on your personal homepage by altering your answers to our registration questions (do this on your settings page) or by adjusting the topics on your personal tag list. The list of links across the top of your personal homepage should provide you with all the direction you need to navigate your personalised content.
Managing your email
Our mailing lists are compiled in advance, so if you change your subscription, please give it a few days to take effect. This includes subscribing, changing your email address or unsubscribing. If you have a username and password, you can adjust your email preferences on your settings page, at the bottom of the preferences tab..
If you have a newsletter-only account (you receive emails from us but you don’t have a username and password), click on the link in the footer of any email we send to you. This will take you to your newsletter settings page. Make any changes, confirming the address to which the changes apply, and click to save.
If your emails look garbled or full of code, this can happen when you view an HTML email with a mail program that either doesn't support HTML, or supports HTML but strips out critical portions of formatting code. To read an HTML email, you need to use an HTML-enabled email program. This could simply mean changing the settings on your current email reader, or you may need to switch to a web-based email service.
We will not rent, give, lend or sell your individual information (including email addresses) to anyone unless required to by law or as set out in our privacy policy.
Saw something you liked on the site... and now you can’t find it?
We publish new content every day and our homepage changes throughout the day to reflect this. The last fortnight’s content is always listed on our archives page; if what you’re looking for isn’t there, try searching for it (search box is top-right of every page) or walking through our archives. Articles are filed by topic and by date so, depending on what you remember about the article that should be easiest method of tracking it down.
If none of these methods does the trick and you’re still having problems finding particular content, you can contact us for help. Please be sure to provide as much information as possible about what you’re looking for.
Financial advice
The aim of our website is to put you in control, to make you aware of the general issues and help you to become capable both of making your own decisions and avoiding being ripped off when seeking advice from others.
You are welcome to use our site to discuss issues that concern you and, we hope, to be educated by the experience. But we are not a regulated Financial Adviser and thus cannot give personal advice, so please don’t ask for it. If you do have questions about money, take them to Q&A, ask the community what it thinks, and then use that as a starting point to do your own research. Good luck!