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Member FAQs

As we transition from the old website to our new website and foster a new way of members managing profiles; it’s important to help answer any questions that you may have. For that reason, we’ve put together a short list of FAQs that we believe you may have and have provided answers to those questions below.

< Go back to edit your profile.


We’ve simplified your user experience by taking the information you can edit outside of the WordPress interface. We’ve provided this FAQ as a way to help you update your profile.

After logging in, you’re immediately redirected to the “Edit profile” page, which you can re-access at any time after logging in by clicking on the “Edit profile” link in the menu.

NB: If you don’t see “Edit profile” but instead “Log in”, please click the log in link and authenticate yourself to edit your details.

Once you’ve obtained your login details – having established the email address to use and set your password – you’re free to change your details on the website as little or as often as you like.

The idea moving forward, is that profile management and updating becomes your responsibility. We’re removing any barriers and lead-time that previously stood in the way and are putting all the power in your hands to maximise the profile you have on our website.

We allow you to show four recent pieces of work on our website. You can provide a title, brief description and link to an external resource such as a blog page or YouTube video.

To add portfolio pieces to your portfolio:

  1. navigate to the edit profile page by either logging in or clicking on the “Edit profile” link in the navigation;
  2. click/tap onto the “Your work” tab at the end of the row;
  3. click on the “Add piece of work +” button to add a new set of fields;
  4. enter a headline, brief description (ideally no more than 60/70 words) and a link to the external article/webpage. We don’t allow complete work to be added to the Guild’s website so the external link may be to your blog page or YouTube channel.
  5. Portfolio work may be rearranged by hovering over the number of the fields, which is located to the left of the description. When hovering over you’ll be shown the 4-way directional arrow. Click, hold and drag to rearrange the order.

NB: because you’re not able to post any work directly to the Guild’s website, we recommend hosting PDF documents or videos using an external service such as Dropbox, YouTube or Amazon’s cloud storage.

Currently the only way to host audio or video would be via a third-party service such as Vimeo, YouTube or SoundCloud.

We’ve provided instructions and guidelines to help you complete your profile on the Guild’s website, which includes our recommended word counts too.

We’re not strictly enforcing these word counts but instead trusting that all members will respect these guidelines and keep their profiles within these boundaries.

Your username can be used to log in to our website with. We’ve designed them from the ground-up to be random and secure; only known to you and only visible in your profile page of the website. For your security and ours, we don’t allow usernames to be changed once they’ve been set.

Displaying your name as anything other than your first name last name publically on the website poses a security risk to our website. It would also affect how you’re displayed on the results of searches too. For this reason, we revert your display name to be first name last name.

At the end of 2016/beginning of 2017 we asked members to complete a short survey, which we circulated via email. Responses to this survey were used to populate these new fields on the website.

If you didn’t complete the survey, we’ve copied your profile across from the old website. You can change this information yourself now if you wish by logging in.

Select the very bottom option under “International Region” and enter your country. Once you’re done, click the “Update profile” button to save your region.

A valid URL begins with http or https. We recommend accessing your social network pages through a web browser and copying/pasting the URL from your web browser address bar into the fields on your Guild profile page.

It may be that you have a second occupation – perhaps blogging in your spare time, writing or public speaking. You can choose up to five profession/occupation responsibilities – we recommend being honest about what you’re involved in and responsible for in order to help our new search be as accurate as possible.

There’s a handy “Add New Choice” button at the bottom of the occupation list. Although we’ve covered a wide range of areas that may be applicable to you, we may have missed some too.

We again recommend being honest and aware that our search algorithm is intelligent enough to understand PR stands for public relations and comms, communications. If all your occupational responsibilities are pre-listed, please don’t add synonym or related words and phrases.

There’s a handy “Add New Choice” button at the bottom of the organisations list. Although we’ve covered a wide range of organisations that may be applicable to you, we may have missed some too.

We again recommend being honest and aware that our search algorithm is intelligent enough to understand CAMRA stands for Campaign for Real Ale. If all your organisations are pre-listed, please don’t add synonym or full-named items.

The maximum number of industry organisations any one person can have is five. We want people to think hard and be honest about the organisations they belong to and actively contribute to in order to maximise the impact of our new and improved search function has.

There’s a handy “Add New Choice” button at the bottom of the organisations list. Although we’ve covered a wide range of organisations that may be applicable to you, we may have missed some too.

We again recommend being honest and compromising. If you’ve judged a beer competition for Beoir, selecting “Beer judging experience e.g. CAMRA/SIBA competitions” is the option you should choose. The search filters on the front end of the website will work better when more than one person belongs to a given filter because it’s otherwise the filters will become too obscure.

The maximum number of qualifications any one person can have is ten. We want people to think hard and be honest about the qualifications they have in order to maximise the impact of our new and improved search function has.

There’s a handy “Add New Choice” button at the bottom of the areas of expertise list. Although we’ve covered a wide range of areas that may be applicable to you, we may have missed some too.

We again recommend being honest and aware that our search algorithm is intelligent enough to understand IT means Information Technology and Computers/Computing. If an area of expertise you have is already covered, please don’t add new ones that are a synonym or similar to existing categories.

The maximum number of areas of expertise any one person can have is ten. We want people to think hard and be honest about the areas they specialise in the maximise the impact of our new and improved search function.

To maximise the performance of the website, we validate photo upload fields against a selection of criteria. Your photo must be:

  • no wider than 1920px;
  • no taller than 1080px;
  • no bigger than 2MB (2048KB); and
  • formatted either JPEG or PNG

If your uploaded photo doesn’t conform to any of the above criteria your upload will fail and you’ll be asked to try again.

Previously our search function was quite limited.

Our new algorithm though compares search results against six different benchmarks in order to determine the most meaningful set of results and return results that are a far superior, accurate and relevant match.

We analyse the number of exact matches against your search term/phrase, we look at the number of matching words (including synonyms) as well as the proximity of those words and positioning of them too.

We account in typos, give priority to completed Guild Member fields and analyse members against a number of other factors too, which helps build the overall order of results. We do all of this in less than half-a-second from you clicking search too!

Our new algorithm is intelligent enough to detect keyword stuffing – so please don’t fill your profile with keywords that mean your profile doesn’t read right or make sense.

We advise that although most changes should be instantaneous, they may in fact take up to a few minutes to reflect if lots of other people are updating their information at the same time.

Our algorithm is always learning too – looking at popular search terms as time goes on and continually evolving in the way it determines the best possible matches for a search.

Similar members are displayed on the single profile view of a member. Similarity is determined based on occupational responsibilities, industry organisations and even the region of a member too.

There may be far more matches than just the six displayed, but we use a randomiser to choose a selection of six from the entire set of results so that it’s a level playing field and not weighted toward particular members.

The featured member function on the homepage works by selecting any one (1) random member from our database. It may be that you experience seeing the same member twice if you refresh the page, and although this is unlikely, it’s not impossible. We’re simply selecting a random member to feature each time the page is shown.

The about page feature member works slightly differently. Here, we feature any member who’s completed the “What they like most about the Guild” field on their profile. The difference being here is that we select any one random member who’s completed this field; so, to be in with a chance of being featured on the about us page, please complete this field on your profile.