Options for emailing members

This web site generates emails to members including:

  • Regular update emails
  • Notifications of new rides and updates
  • Notifications of new events
  • Notifications of new forum topics and replies

The site can send emails from the public using:

  • Links from descriptions of rides where you are ride leader
  • Other links on the site

Also, members can send emails to other members.

You have several options for the email address you use to send and receive emails through this site. Click any of the options below to see more details.

Use your automatically assigned PCTC email address

When you join us, you are given a username and password to log in to the members' area of our web site.

You can then use email address:

xxx@portsmouthctc.org.uk

as your email address where xxx is your username. So if your username was FredB, your email address would be fredb@haylingu3a.org - case doesn't matter so FredB@haylingu3a.org works just as well.

For this to work, you must provide your home email address in your user profile. The site will forward all emails it gets addressed to your PCTC address to the email address in your user profile.

Because this works so much better than sending emails from your home email address, the web site will automatically suggest using your PCTC address when you send emails from the site.

Big caveat: Some personal email software allows you to send emails from different email addresses than your usual one. You cannot use your PCTC address that way. As part of our ongoing efforts to ensure our emails get delivered, we have instructed mail providers to reject any emails with PCTC addresses that didn't come from our web site.

Use your normal email address

When sending emails through our site, it will automatically assume you want to use your PCTC email address which is in the form "username@haylingu3a.org".

If you have good reason to override that suggestion, you can. There's no issue at all using one of our role addresses like secretary@portsmouthctc.org.uk.

If you use a non-HIU3A address like fredbloggs100@gmail.com we can't use it to send the email.

Why not?

Two reasons:

  1. Our email provider - Amazon - requires us to register all the email addresses we use to send email. It's impractical to do that for all members. It does, however, allow us to send using any email address ending in @portsmouthctc.org.uk.
  2. Internet Service Providers are increasingly insisting that emails sent using their domains (such as gmail.com) must come from one of their servers. If we use one of their email addresses to send mail from our web site, it will probably be rejected.

We therefore use an alternative 'from' address - emailer@portsmouthctc.org.uk. The body of the email explains that people cannot reply directly to your email (which is a pain) but they have to rekey your email address (provided in the body of the email) instead.

For that reason we strongly suggest you use your PCTC email address as suggested by the site or one of our role addresses (such as secretary@portsmouthctc.org.uk) unless you have a very good reason not to.

Set up a Portsmouth CTC mailbox

We set up an address yourname@portsmouthctc.org.uk. Instead of forwarding emails, we hold them in a mailbox protected by a password you supply.

You will then need to either:

  • Add details of the mailbox to your email system so it picks up portsmouthctc.org.uk emails like it does your other emails. Optionally you can also set up your email system so you decide which email address to use when sending emails.
  • Or use the webmail service to work with your portsmouthctc.org.uk emails.

This approach needs the most work to set up, but if you receive a lot of PCTC emails, it provides maximum assurance you get all emails addressed to you.

It's the method I use and it works well. We have a limited number of mailboxes available so we might have to prioritise club officials, campaigners and ride leaders.