Googlegroups and your google membership are mostly self-administering.   That is, you can create your membership, edit your membership, and delete your membership yourself.  That is a big reason it was chosen as our communications vehicle.

Becoming a member of a googlegroup is described in my 8/21/2007 blog entry.  In order to view your group membership and to view the googlegroup website at all you must become a google member creating a google account .  You must use one of the email addresses that you use in the googlegroup as your username of the google account (membership).  You will need to provide a password of at least 8 characters.  See here:

https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount?continue=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F&hl=en

In order to login to the googlegroup, you must be signed in as a google member using the email address as the username and the password you created. 

Once in the googlegroup, you can control how you receive your emails:

  How do you want to read this group?
  No Email
 I will read this group on the web
 
 Abridged Email (No more than 1 email per day)
 Get a summary of new activity each day
 
 Digest Email (Approximately 1 email per day)
 Get up to 25 full new messages bundled into a single email
 
 Email (Approximately 1 email per day)
 Send each message to me as it arrives

Select which one and click "save these settings"

If you want to remove yourself from the group, just go to the group home page, click on Edit My Membership on the right hand side,  and click on the Unsubscribe button.  You can also simply send an email from the account you want to remove to challengerssoccer-xxx-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com, where xxx is your challengers group name like mngrs or allcoaches.

If you want to add a new email so you recieve it at another account, just go to the googlegroup homepage
http://groups.google.com/group/challengerssoccer-xxx

again where xxx is the challengers groupname you want to join.

If you have already created a google account (membership) with this email address, then you can
Sign in and apply for membership (left hand side of page).  If you have not, then you can Apply for Group Membership (right hand side of the page).

PROBLEMS:
If an email address stops receiving group emails, it is likely due to the fact that when google sent an email to that address recently, it bounced (was not accepted) for some reason (e.g. inbox was full, a filter thought the googlegroup email was spam).  To start receiving emails again, a manager of your googlegroup needs to send a test email to this email account.  Obviously, the problem needs to be resolved before the test email will be successful.  The manager should be able to help with this if they "view" the email that bounced.  Only the manager can do this, not the member. Assuming the problem is detected and resolved, and the "test email" is executed, an email such as the one below should be sent to the account.  The member then must validate the action by clicking on the link in the email.

Following these instructions will help keep adminstration work to a minimum.

Regards,
Don McBride


------------
example of bouncing resolution email
--------------------
 

Hello don@challengerssoccer.com,

Over the past several days, Google Groups has had difficulty delivering

messages to your email address (don@challengerssoccer.com). We're sending this message to see if your email address is once again accepting mail.

If you're reading this message it means that your account is working, and we

will automatically reactivate delivery to your address in a few days. If you

want to reactivate delivery immediately, click this link:

http://groups.google.com/groups/reactivate?id=x8_oBAkAAAClrko-mahBhpP_fDM-25KP

the Help Center at http://groups.google.com/support.