Help — Using the BARC Website
Finding Your Way Around
- The top menu has dropdowns. Hover over (or tap, on a phone) Home, Events & Programs, Resources, Ham News! or Members to see the pages underneath.
- Home holds the club's own information: About BARC, Officers & Coordinators, Bylaws, Past Membership Meetings (with Meeting Minutes under it), the Communication Center, Other Club Documents, and the Privacy Policy.
- Events & Programs has two columns: On the Air (Field Day, Parks on the Air, Digital Radio, Hamfests, Public Service & EmComm) and Club Programs (Tech Night, Presentations, Educational Programs, Other Area Clubs).
- Repeaters & Nets and Contesting/QSOs/QSL/DX go straight to their own pages.
- The amber items — Newsletter, Calendar and Ham News! — change most often.
- Most pages have a left-hand sidebar with related pages. Breadcrumbs above each title ("Home › Page") show where you are.
- On phones and tablets the menu folds into the ☰ button in the upper right.
News, Newsletter & Documents
- Headlines shows the latest stories from ARRL News, Amateur Radio Weekly, DXZone, SDR & Digital Radio, the Digital Library of Amateur Radio and Amateur Radio Newsline. Each list updates by itself; click a headline to read the full story on the source's site.
- DX Section shows live DX cluster spots, updated every minute. Pick a band or mode, or tick Hide US & Canada for real DX. Click a call sign to look it up on QRZ.
The Newsletter page shows the current issue at the top and every issue from this year under Recent Issues — new issues appear automatically. Older issues are in the Archive by year. Each issue has Read Online (opens the PDF) and Download. The sidebar's Article Index lists every article that has run in Full Quieting.
The Presentations page (Events & Programs › Club Programs) is a searchable library of past club presentations. Search by title or presenter, click a category to open it, and use the PDF button to view a file. Have a topic idea? Use Submit a Topic in its sidebar.
Home › Past Membership Meetings lists past meeting presentations by year, with Meeting Minutes beneath it. Bylaws and other official documents are under the same Home menu.
Members: Logging In & Out
- Open Members › Member Login and sign in with your username and password. If your account was set up from the club roster, your username is your first initial + last name, all lowercase (for example
jadams). - First time, or forgot your password? Use Members › Reset Password and enter the email address the club has on file. A link to set a new password arrives by email — check your spam folder if you don't see it.
- Once you're logged in, the Members menu shows Member Portal, My Profile, Member Directory and Log out.
- When you're finished, choose Members › Log out — especially on a shared or public computer.
Members: Portal, Profile & Directory
Member Portal is your members-only home page: a welcome with your membership status, the What's New box, meeting minutes, forms and documents, net-control resources, and the officers.
My Profile is your club record. Keep your contact details, call sign, license class and expiration, ARRL membership and interests up to date, change your password in the Account card (which also shows your username), and click Save profile. The Membership Details section is kept by the Membership Coordinator — contact them if anything there looks wrong.
Member Directory lists current members with call sign, license class, member type, email, phone and city. You can hide your email, phone or city — or leave the directory entirely — in the Member Directory card on My Profile. Only logged-in, current members can see the directory.
The badge next to your name shows your status:
- Active — paid up for this year
- Pending approval — a new application waiting for the Membership Coordinator
- Renewal due — January and February, when last year's membership has ended; renew by March 1
- Expired — not renewed by March 1; members-only pages are closed until you renew
Joining & Renewing
Join: choose Members › Join BARC. Dues are $15 individual or $18 family (your whole household). Membership runs January through December; join after July and dues are half price. Newly licensed hams can choose a free first year or a low-cost handheld radio.
Renew: dues for the coming year can be paid from November and must be paid by March 1. Pay at a monthly meeting, by PayPal (Friends & Family) to treasurer@bellbrookarc.org, or mail a check made out to BARC to BARC Treasurer, P.O. Box 73, Bellbrook, OH 45305. Your status updates once the Membership Coordinator records the payment.
Officers: Creating a Post
- Log in at
bellbrookarc.org/wp/wp-admin, then choose Posts → Add New. - Add a title and your text. Use + → Image for photos; select words and press Ctrl+K to add a link.
- On the right, pick a Category (tick What's New to show it on the Member Portal), set a Featured Image, and write a short Excerpt — that's the summary shown in post lists.
- Preview, then Publish (or Schedule for a later date). Edit later from Posts → All Posts.
Membership Coordinators
Members › Membership Dashboard is your workspace:
- Tiles at the top count members by status (Active, Renewal due, Pending, Expired and so on). Click one to list those members. Search always looks through every member, by name, call sign, email or phone.
- New applicants arrive as Pending. Use Approve or Reject. Approving opens the members-only pages to them and emails them a welcome.
- Open any member by clicking their name. You can edit everything, including the Membership Details card: paid-through year, member type, household link, approval status, notes and payment history.
- Record a payment from the member's record. The rates box shows $15 / $18 and the half-price rule after July. Payments made in November or December count toward the next year. A household payment renews every linked family member.
- Families: each person has their own record. Anyone with their own email gets their own login; others are linked to the household's primary member.
- Active through December 31 of the paid-through year · Renewal due January–February · Expired from March 1 · Life members never expire.
The Reports tab has nine reports — Current Active Members, Inactive/Expired, New Members, Members by Type, Renewals/Expiration, Contact List, Membership History, Members Missing Information and Membership Counts. Each one can be printed or downloaded as a CSV for Excel. The dashboard's roster CSV exports every member and field — a good monthly backup.
The Contact List shows details members have hidden in the directory. Keep printouts and CSV files private.
Site Administrators
- Newsletter: upload each issue to the
/newsletter/folder with File Manager, namedFull_Quieting_MonthYear.pdf(e.g.Full_Quieting_November2026.pdf). It appears automatically. In December, add the year's issues to the Archive widget. - Ham News feeds: add a feed in Aggregator › Sources, then a Display for it (5 items, no pagination), and paste its shortcode into a new card in the Ham News Shortcode widget.
- After editing a page: click Update, then LiteSpeed Cache › Purge All, and check it in a private window.
- Roster import (CSV) is at the bottom of the Membership Dashboard, visible to admins only.
- Standard page: Container 1 (title bar + styles), Container 2 row with a 210px sidebar and a content column set to Size: Default — never Grow.
- Shortcodes go in Shortcode widgets, never HTML widgets. Internal links use
/wp/page-slug/with the trailing slash. - Members-only pages: edit the page, set Simple WP Membership Protection to Yes, tick all levels.
- Wordfence: two-factor login is required for administrators. Locked-out users are unblocked under Wordfence › Tools › Blocking.
- Email Hold snippet: while active, no email reaches members. Blocked messages are listed under Tools › BARC Email Hold. Deactivate it to send member email.
- Keep your admin login separate from your member login — never give an admin account a membership level.
Something not working? Let us know — no detail is too small.
Email the webmaster — webmaster@bellbrookarc.org
