Houston Bay Area RWA

Contest Home | Technical FAQ

Technical FAQ
Houston Bay Area RWA
HBA programs, benefits, and officers
Judge a Book by Its Cover contest
Upcoming meetings and special events
Meet the Authors
Book reviews written by HBA members
Articles on writing and the writing life, by our members
Valuable resources, submitted by our members
Join HBA
E-mail and snail mail information
Members Only

 

Houston Bay Area is dedicated to encouraging and supporting the romance writers, both published and aspiring, in its membership.

  

This FAQ provides information about browsers, connection speed, and other technical topics.

 

What web browsers do you recommend?

Minimum requirements are:

  • AOL 8.0 and 9.0 or higher
  • Netscape 7 or higher
  • Internet Explorer 6.0.2900 or higher
  • Mozilla Firefox 1.0.6 or higher
  • Apple Safari 1.2 or higher
  • Opera 8.5 or higher

Why do you recommend only certain web browsers?

Because we tested them. In some cases, older browsers (e.g., the AOL 6.0 browser) had trouble displaying the pages we created.

My web browser is old. Where can I get a newer version?

Almost all browser vendors make their web browsers available for free. Go to your vendor's web site and download the latest and greatest version to install. If you can't find your vendor's web site, try typing the name of your web browser and the word "download" into a search engine.

I didn't receive my payment notification e-mail. What do I do?

If you filled out the entry form and paid via PayPal, you should receive a payment notification e-mail from HBA verifying that we've logged your payment. Please give us 24 hours to receive and log your payment. If 24 hours have passed, please e-mail the Contest Coordinator.

I'm on a dial-up connection. Will I have trouble connecting to your contest web site?

In theory, no. In reality, a lot of factors play into how the internet performs and even a broadband or satellite connection can fail on occasion. We took pains to create a web application that would run fine on most current browsers and under all internet connection speeds.

The only place where a dial-up connection may see difficulty is in uploading your cover file, but that's likely because of the connection speed. We have set up our system so that it's very patient in receiving data and will not "timeout" prematurely. Regardless, a dial-up connection typically involves a longer wait when uploading and downloading data.

If you have a dial-up connection and find yourself unable to enter the contest or upload your cover, please e-mail the Contest Technical Administrator.

Why did you choose to go totally online with this contest?

The designers of the contest wanted to make it possible for authors from countries other than the U.S. to participate, and for booksellers in those countries to judge as well. That meant we couldn't mail anything anywhere unless we wanted to charge an exorbitant entry fee to cover the cost of international postage.

By going online, we keep our fee low and our international participation high.

What do I do if I run into a problem entering the contest or uploading my cover file?

Please e-mail the Contest Technical Administrator.

What will happen to my cover file once the contest is over?

Once the winners have been announced on February 10, 2008, we will purge our database and all entries will be destroyed. The only data we will keep is the judges' scores.

Is your site secure?

As we are not accepting your credit card information directly, our site doesn't have to be Fort Knox. We do have a high level of security in terms of fending off hackers, viruses, and other Net Nasties, however, and our system is monitored for suspicious activity.

PayPal offers the same high level of encryption that banks and credit card companies use. If you are comfortable accessing your bank account or paying your credit card bill online, you should have no trouble with PayPal.

Read more on PayPal security.

I don't want to use PayPal. Can I write you a check?

Yes. When you sign up to enter the contest, you can select either PayPal or Pay By Check as your payment option. If you choose to pay by check, you'll receive the mailing address to send your check to. Once we receive your check, we'll send you a link you can use to log back in and upload your cover.

More questions? Ask us and we'll add to this FAQ!