First Time Visitors
Please read through these helpful topics. You'll find important information here that will maximize your experience using the site and getting you up to speed quickly. At a minimum, please pay attention to the highlighted wording.
PURPOSE OF "OUR" WEBSITE:
This site was created to connect and re-connect with our classmates, especially those who won't be able to join us at future gatherings or reunions. Cost, distance and physical abilities can be limiting factors for some, so we want this platform to be welcoming to all. Our next goal is to make this site a scrapbook of memories for all classmates.
Everything you need to know about setting up a profile to gain access to the rest of our website is on this page. If you have questions, please contact the Site Administrators.
PRIVACY NOTICE:
This is a private website, built from the ground up by your fellow classmates. Our website is HTTPS and SSL certified so it is encrypted and ensures a safe browsing experience. Your personal information will never be sold, shared or distributed to others including our Alma Mater. No outside communication or request for money will result by participating in our website.
Your contact information is private. The sign-up email and text information you provide when registering is shielded. YOU determine what information will be displayed on your Profile. This information WILL be viewable by all member classmates. Each classmate has the ability to limit the amount of information they provide on their Profile, which will be viewable only by member classmates.
We have taken the liberty of downloading our entire graduating class photos in the Gallery & placed a copy in your profile. If you do not want your name and picture on this site, it may be removed by contacting the Site Administrators. This will end all communications to you from the Bishop McDevitt High School Class of 1969 and your fellow classmates on this platform.
REGISTERING FOR THE SITE:
When you click on the LOG IN portal for the first time, you will be asked for some information including name, email address, birth date and a password of your choosing. There will also be a Mandatory Vetting Question. It is not a difficult answer for a true Crusader, even after all these years.
Additional information is useful to confirm or update your city, state, phone & perhaps home address, and phone numbers. These will not be visible to fellow classmates. Sometimes we collect mailing addresses and phone numbers in the event that we need to contact you by snail mail or phone (texting). Your city & state is used to show where our Crusaders are located throughout the 50 states and beyond. Your information will never be given to other classmates without your permission. However, YOU can certainly exchange personal information when you establish a direct connection with other classmates in private chats if you desire.
The vetting question will require the attention of a Site Administrator to approve. So please be patient. We try to respond same day, if not within minutes to hours, but none of us are tied to a keyboard or getting paid to do so. The vetting process is a one time occurrence to keep out entities that may want to harvest our information or have more nefarious intentions.
Once you are approved, re-entry should be automatic, provided your browser (see below in Passwords) has retained your username and password.
PASSWORDS:
Passwords do not need to be the high security style required for some sites, although they are certainly recommended. You must use a minimum of six (6) characters. However; as for most websites, we recommend your password should be 8 to 12 characters in length and include a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers & special characters. The old axiom of "a chain is as strong as the weakest link" is at play here.
Apologies are in order at this point. Until we get a little better at this, you will only see dots when inputting your password, so please bear with us. We are hoping to resolve this issue sooner than later.
Clicking the "Remember Me" prompt or equivalent recall feature on your browser will allow you to bypass entering the password each time you visit. Eventually the "remember me" safeguard may fail. For instance when you get a new computer, tablet/iPad or cell phone. So, please make note of your password and keep a copy in a safe place.
If you forget your password simply click on "forgot password" when attempting to log in and the system will take you through an easy process to establish a new one.
SETTING UP YOUR PROFILE:
Please make this a priority. It will help everyone. In order to access the member only pages that are on this site, you need to register. However, you are not required to setup a profile, but that defeats a major reason for this website. We as friends are here to know a little more about your life.
To set up your profile: find the "Classmate Profiles" page, locate your name at the top right of any page and click on the "down triangle." This will open up three options, the first of which reads "My Profile." Clicking on that will take you directly to your personal Profile Page. You can also access your profile page from the Member Registry, which is listing of everyone for whom we have an email address. Those who have added a current photo in their profile page, will see it there as well. You'll get the hang of it.
Follow the prompts to create your profile. Ideally you will want to provide a little about your life since graduation. It doesn't need to be a book, unless you have a lot to say. Family life, jobs, pets, etc. - tell us what's on your mind. We have plenty of bandwidth available to chronicle whatever you wish to share. Anecdotes from our school days are helpful as well.
We encourage you to add a current picture to your profile as a master photo. This photo may be displayed in other areas on the site. Many of us have probably been passing each other for years at stores, restaurants, etc. and never realized it. Only you can edit your profile page.
Also, a word about your "Display Name." This is what everyone will see on your profile page and possibly elsewhere on the site. To access it, go to your "Account Settings" - the link for this is found at your login portal. There you will be able to change or edit it at any time. We believe this should also be a priority before experiencing all this website has to offer.
If you were part of the Bishop McDevitt High School Class of 1969 (if only for one year) we will be happy to have you join us for the camaraderie. Contact us and we will look into getting you included.
CRUSADER FORUM:
This is where we can openly discuss subjects pertaining to Bishop McDevitt. Currently there are two sub-groups. Those are the AUDITORIUM for general discussion about classes, clubs & activities and the STADIUM for sports oriented topics. This forum was developed to talk about our days in school and catch up on events up to the present. Again, we prefer to keep these conversations McDevitt-centric.
Any post on these boards can be read by everyone registered to the site.
If there is enough interest for particular subjects or specific areas of interest, additional sub-groups can be added. Gather your ideas and suggestions and petition the Site Administrators using the Contact feature. All discussions and sub-groups are open to everyone. At present, we have no plans to make any of them private or exclusionary.
SENDING PRIVATE MESSAGES:
Private messages to your fellow classmates can be generated using the "Members Chat" button that appears on some pages. More information on this function appears below. For those of you with spam blocking or email filtering capabilities, please add crusadermcd69@gmail.com to your email account as a safe sender in order to ensure you receive email communications via this portal. Emails generated from this site, especially when responding to Contact messages, will also use that address.
A message you receive that was generated in Members Chat can be responded to from your laptop, iPad, tablet or smart phone. However, the originator may need to return to the website to read your response.
Clicking on the Members Chat button will provide a small page with a listing of recent messages; very much like those that you may have encountered when dealing with a ChatBot on some websites. If your corresponding member is online it will work the same way, except you will be talking to a fellow class member.
When you click on "New Message" a searchable listing of all classmates registered with the site will appear. Here you can send send a private message to one or several people.
Hints: There is no need to "create a group" each time you send messages to more than one person, unless it is desired. Hitting the Return key will automatically send your Members Chat message, often well before you had planned on it. A workaround for this situation is to hit the "Shift + Enter" keys together in order to provide a page break without sending the message at the same time.
"UNACCOUNTED" CLASSMATES:
We have attempted to facilitate membership by pre-entering the names and known email addresses of our classmates. You may have already received an invitational email from this listing. This also includes some others who attended with us and have expressed continuing interest in maintaining contact, but might not have received their diploma in the dust of the Farm Show Arena. Please note, UNTIL you register and establish a password, the website will consider you as "Unaccounted" and an outsider.
Also, please help us. We need your assistance to help all of our classmates to realize their opportunity to be a part of this venture. We have made every attempt to include everyone, but there are some out there that have wandered away. There is a page on the website named "Missing or Tardy" which lists everyone we have been unable to contact or receive a response even if we believe we have found the right person. We have come tantalizingly close to relocating some, but they have eluded us. There have been recent sightings of several, but for some reason they have escaped our attempts to obtain a phone number and most importantly for this website - an email address.
If you realize someone is missing from the "Missing or Tardy" page and have information about them or better yet have communications with them, please prod them to get in touch with us or simply contact the Site Administrators and we can take it from there. Please put on your thinking cap(s) and send us a note that might help someone reconnect with our classmates.
UPDATES:
If you change your email address, snail mail address, or phone number, please update your Contact Info so we have up to date information. That way you'll always be in the know about what your classmates are doing!
SITE PAGES:
We have sprinkled some songs on several pages, most can be found at the top of the page. For now you will need to click on the link to hear it. And if you're ever curious about any link on the site, just click on it! There isn't anything on this website that will wreck your computer. Relax! Enjoy!
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