Frequently Asked Questions

You can access the post form from your member profile under the “posts” tab or from this page if you are logged in.

This page covers formatting for submitting a post — what we request and some special formats and features you may use in posts on our website.

Basic Formatting for Submitted Posts

When you submit a post on our website, here are some things to consider. Some are requirements; some are requests:

• The post must be in English and use correct grammar and punctuation (we usually find typos in our own writing if we write and publish when we’re tired). We’re willing to make small edits but not to rewrite your post.
• We highly recommend using headings in your writing. This is a blog post, not literature (well, unless it’s a story, and we’ll get to that), and headings help with SEO and readability for online readers. If your post is long enough, we’ll likely add a table of contents, and that’s how it’s done!
  
  However, if you’re submitting something, for instance, such as a story or an essay for which headings are inappropriate, we’re 100% on board with that! Some types of writing will suffer from being divided into headings and sections.
• Like the above, please try not to write too long paragraphs. Again, online readability.
• At the very least, we require a featured image for your post.

Special Formatting for Certain Post Categories

Some of our categories, such as product reviews, recipes, book reviews, polls, or trivia quizzes, have “special” items: recipe cards, quizzes, polls…
You may not be able to insert the item in your submitted post yourself, but if you’re submitting a post in one of these categories, we ask that you include the following:

Trivia Quizzes

First, you must create a quiz! You can do that from the “Create Quiz” tab under “More” in your member profile.

Then, you can create and submit a post. In the post body, make sure that you add which trivia quiz you want to insert here — though it will likely be evident.

There may not be any appropriate categories for your quiz and questions. Don’t worry; just put them in an existing category, and we’ll handle it.

Also, make sure you add some text to the body of the post with more information about the quiz.

If we accept it, we will likely add some formatting to your trivia quiz.

Polls

See Trivia Quiz. The process is much the same. You’ll find a Create Poll tab in your member profile.

Product Reviews

We can add some review stars if you’d like, but you need to let us know:

• The product link
• What should each rated area be (i.e., are you rating it on ease of use, durability, and appearance? Then tell us those areas along with how many stars each should have and your overall rating)?
• A summary that should go in the review box.

Recipes

We may add a form to create a recipe, but we’re using the standard form for now. If you want to add a recipe, make sure you include:

• Ingredients in US imperial units. The recipe plugin adds a unit converter.
• If an ingredient is strange or complex to come by, explain it.
• Add clear step-by-step directions.
• For recipes, we’d like more than a featured image. Images for some steps are helpful, depending on the recipe, or even video clips.

Book reviews

If your post is a book review, please enter the title, author, ISBN, and GoodReads link. We will format the book review box that appears at the start of the post.

Product Comparisons

If you are writing a “gear” type post and want us to create an Amazon comparison box in your post, please let us know the products and what you want to include and we can format it for you.

Footnotes and other things you can add

Footnotes

If you want to add footnotes to your post, wrap your footnote content in brackets with this {[{ to begin and the same in the opposite direction to end. I could do this here as, even in the code block, it ended up as a footnote.

Make sure there is a space between the word and your starting brackets.

Wikipedia Content

Using direct Wikipedia content is ONLY permissible at the end of a glossary term and ONLY if that term has significant non-Wikipedia content.

However, if you’d like to try, enter:

[rdp-wiki-embed url=’http://linktothewikipediaresource’]

…where you replace the URL with the link of the Wikipedia page.

There is a chance we may remove Wikipedia content at some point if we ever find issues with loading because of doing this. This content is only meant to supplement glossary terms.

Galleries

If you want to use a standard WordPress gallery, you should be able to configure it on the post form. Or we can use our own formatted galleries feature which displays better (we think). We can put your images in a gallery with the ability for logged in users to add to the gallery and/or we can display your gallery images in a lightbox social sharing icons and a button allowing downloads OR a large lightbox with EXIF info and thumbnail strip at the bottom.

You must tell us which images you want in a gallery and how you want it to present.

Single Location or Route Maps

If you are also creating a map page or routes page to supplement your post, we prefer you create a map image and link it to the page with the map. This saves us on map loads and decreases the overall loading time of the page. Not everyone cares about the map; let’s just the people who do access it.

When you submit content, you should get an automated email acknowledgment. Make sure that you allow emails from hello@pnwbeyond.com.

After that, how long it takes us to review your post varies depending on what we’re doing and how many other submissions we’ve had. It can take from 72 hours to several weeks. But you should check back in if you have not heard anything within a few weeks.

Please be patient. Often, if you need to wait, it’s a good sign because it means we’re editing your post in preparation for scheduling.

You should receive automated emails from us whenever a post changes status, which means that you should receive an email if:

• We receive your post submission.
•  We schedule your post for publication.
•  We published your post.
•  We decline your post submission.

Note that the latter happens when we move a post to the trash. It’s crucial that you save your own post for yourself if you want it in the future. We do not retain declined posts — our trash gets automatically emptied on a regular basis. This puts the responsibility in your hands, ensuring you have control over your content.

If we decide to publish your guest post, we will likely do some editing.

In most cases, edits will be minor, and we will not check in with you before we publish your post.

If we feel that the changes we want to make are significant, you may receive an email with questions. Please allow emails from hello@pnwbeyond.com

Contributors may not edit or delete posts after they are published. Please get in touch with us if you’d like us to delete an unpaid guest post.

When we pay contributors for qualifying content, we use PayPal as our processor. Contributors MUST have a PayPal account. A form field to add your PayPal email address is in the “My earnings” area.

We pay the PayPal fees, if any. If the per-transaction fee becomes too high, we may raise the threshold for payouts higher than $10. Please check the current terms and conditions.

If you are a contributor, you will find a “My earnings” tab under the “More” dropdown in your member area. If your earnings are $10 or more, a “Request payment” button will appear there. $10 is currently the minimum amount for a payout. We may raise the threshold depending on how it affects our fees.

We will not initiate payment unless:

1. You request it OR
2. Your balance has exceeded $100 OR
3. We are discontinuing our paid writing program or can no longer run this website, in which case we will pay out any available funds greater than $5.

After your first paid post is accepted and you are moved to contributor status, you’ll notice a “My earnings” tab open under the “More” dropdown in your member profile.

From here, you can view your posts and current balance.

You may also see those items here if you’ve also submitted items such as routes, glossary entries, or locations. They don’t qualify for a flat or per-word placement, but we may occasionally apply a bonus if we see one of these items performing well.

Please refer to the terms and conditions for posting on this website for current terms regarding payment. We prefer to keep specifics in one place to avoid discrepancies.

In general, different post types and categories have different payment systems. Some general things to know:

• We use our counter system for post categories that qualify for a word count payment. Items such as shortcodes, tables of content, and small articles and conjunctions get excluded from the word count.
• While bonuses beyond the initial payment are not guaranteed, they may be awarded based on your overall performance. Please note that this determination is currently a manual process, taking into account several factors.

The following is the official guest post terms and conditions for sponored, guest, or paid posts on this website, Pacific Northwest and Beyond, which is owned by Pacific Northwest and Beyond, LLC a sole-proprietor LLC in the state of Washington.

To submit content on this website, please visit our write for us page.

Definitions

Sponsored Post

A post that is paid by a sponsor to us that promotes a business, product, or service.

Please see our Sponsored Post FAQ.

Guest Post

A guest post is an article created by a website member rather than an admin or editor and does not qualify for monetary compensation.

Paid Post

A paid post is an article submitted by a contributor for which we offer monetary compensation.

Types of content we have on this website

Posts/Articles

These are standard articles. They can also include posts with specific rich content like book reviews, trivia quizzes, or polls.

Events

These are for specific events with a time and location (or URL if it is an online event), except for some holidays, dates in history, etc, that we choose to add.

Routes

These map-type posts feature a point-by-point route map of a cycling path, hike, etc.

Locations

These are single locations on a map. They may supplement a post to show more about, for instance, a piece of local public art you want to draw attention to.

PNWWikis (Glossary entries)

These are glossary entries with information about a subject — we have several different glossaries: one for PNW info, one about cycling terms, and one about photography terms.

Galleries

Currently, we are not paying for photo galleries or media uploaded to community galleries.

Products

We do not allow members to add personal or affiliate products to our shop.

Payment for Posts

We are not a big-budget blog, but we like being a multi-author blog and wish to compensate authors. Currently, we are in an experimental stage with our payment system for writers. We are trying it out through the end of June 2024 and will likely continue it past that. We may make some revisions depending on what we find, but the terms you see here will apply to your post, and we’ll update these terms if we make modifications.

What types of content do you reimburse, and how?

Whether we offer payment for content, how much we pay, and which system we use for calculating payment depends on the post type, its category, and, in some cases, your choice about how you use promotional links.

Post/Articles

For most standard posts, we pay $0.01 per word, which we cap at 2500 words. You can write longer pieces, but we need this initially until we can evaluate further. After that, you may receive additional future compensation depending on the performance of your post. Our system does not automatically track some of the factors we consider. Hence, it’s something we need to track manually every month and will apply if, at some point, the post’s performance exceeds the amount initially paid.

Exceptions by category

Gear/Product Reviews and Lists

For categories with “gear” in the title, which are generally product reviews and lists, we pay $0.005 per word, again capped at 2500 words. We will include our affiliate links in reviews or product lists where we can and replace existing affiliate links. There may be a chance of revenue sharing i the future. Again, this is not guaranteed. Alternatively, if you want to write a gear review and include your affiliate links, you can choose to forego the chance of payment.

Trivia Quizzes and Polls

You can create trivia quizzes (in a tab in your member account) to supplement main posts. Our word counter will exclude the quiz or poll from the overall word count. Generally, we will also put a quiz or poll in a post by itself. We do not pay a per-word rate for poll posts but keep the payment options open for contributors submitting other content as well, in case one ends up generating the ability for future payment. Currently, we pay a flat $5 for trivia quizzes, and they may be eligible for future bonuses. We are talking about sitewide polls, NOT the polls you can post in user activity.

Recipes

Recipes may be short on word count as we exclude the recipe card in the post, but they generally require some effort. We pay $10 per recipe, with the possibility of earning more in the future. We prefer recipes that you can relate to in some way, such as the PNW, outdoor activities, travel, etc.

Event List-type posts

Sometimes, we use our events calendar to create lists of local events. However, we do not currently pay a flat or per-word fee for event list-type posts or reward social shares, but we will keep it open if we potentially bonus this in the future.

Event reports

We sometimes attend, photograph, and report on events (as we enjoy doing so). However, as event reports tend to be brief and not evergreen, we currently do not pay a flat or per-word fee for them, the same as for event list-type posts.

Routes and Locations

We do not pay per-word or flat fees for routes and locations. We keep them open as a paid content type, and if you are a contributor who has submitted other paid content as well, they may appear on the list in your My Earnings tab. We may choose to bonus these for existing competitors if one is performing very well, but it is not guaranteed.

PNWWikis (glossary entries)

As with routes and locations, we do not pay per-word fees for these but keep them open as a paid content type in case we want to make a bonus for exceptional cases in the future. However, this is not guaranteed.

Events

We do NOT pay for submitted events, nor do we charge for them.

Off-Topic Posts

We have an off-topic category for times when we want to write something outside our main topic. We generally limit off-topic posts to our admin. If we choose to publish a guest off-topic post, currently, we do not offer payment for it upon publication but would keep it open for potential future bonuses.

Subject matter

We prefer subject matter about the PNW area of the United States (including posts about MANY aspects of this area, not just things to do), travel, local nature, photography, and outdoor activities such as cycling.

We also do not accept religious posts (unless you consider, just as an example) a post about places to meditate and do forest bathing in the woods as “religious.” Or posts about a charming local chapel.

And we’ll reject posts that use derogatory or hate speech.

We only accept English-language posts as that is our primary readership and we cannot evaluate content in other languages.

Right to Refuse

We only pay for published content (not submitted content) and in specific categories. We do not and cannot publish everything that we receive.

If we cannot use your submission, you should receive an automated email letting you know that we declined your post.

Bonuses (and Deductions)

Some posts may qualify for future bonuses. Bonuses are not guaranteed. However, we’d like to be able to add bonuses to posts that are performing well and intend to do so.

Likewise, if you’ve submitted an article that would be usable but requires a significant amount of editing on our part, we may contact you and check if you want us to proceed. We may deduct a small amount for our extra time.

We base our decision to bonus on several factors. Please do not take actions to try to manipulate how you perceive that we may be making our decisions. If we find a particular member is taking actions like repeated page loadings, clicking on ads, or rating their posts multiple times — though you should not be able to do that and though those are not necessarily all the factors we take into account — we may remove you from the contributor program.

Additionally, you might notice “Facebook Shares” in your earnings tab. In some categories, we offer a tiny bonus for Facebook shares on your post within the first 30 days after your post is published, starting after the second share and capped at ten at this point. We may edit this in the future, depending on the results.

Non-plagarism

We expect the content you submit to us will be your own, and we will run it through a plagiarism checker. If you do not have an image of your own, you may use images from free photo-sharing websites. Please adhere to the licensing terms of the photo you use. For instance, if you borrow a photo from Flickr, make sure it is licensed for commercial use and then credit it (you can add a note for us in the post body).

We also do not allow duplicate posting of your content from another website—or anyone else’s, of course. Once, we found many of our posts on another website, all attributed to the author of “admin,” apparently having been placed there via RSS. It’s not a happy circumstance.

We have made exceptions once or twice for exceptional circumstances and reposted someone’s content at their request. However, we cannot pay for such content and must refer the cannonical link back to the original website.

For glossary entries, you can use a shortcode to insert Wikipedia content at the end of your glossary entry. Wikipedia allows this under its terms—we’ll just cite where the text came from. Your glossary term page must also have a significant amount of other content before it can include this. We do not pay for word count with glossary entries.

Word Count

For standard posts, we require at least 300 words.

Our word count tool for submitted posts is automated and excludes small articles and conjunctions, shortcode content, quoted materials, excerpts, photo captions, and table of contents blocks.

Post Formatting

As you are writing blog posts, we prefer that you use headings. However, not all content requires headings — if you’re writing a story or essay, and headings would detract from your work, then do not include them.

For most blog posts with headings, we’ll add a table of contents at or near the front of the post.

Additionally, you must at least submit a featured image with your post. We prefer a 3:2 image ratio or close, and a “Facebook Ad” size of around 1200 x 700 px works great.

You can find more information about post formatting here.

Post authors group

The first time you submit a post for paid publication and it gets scheduled, our admin will send a “connection request” and then invite you to join a private group for post authors. We recommend you accept. The group is for notifying authors of changes but could also be a format for (some) discussion.

Deleting Posts

Contributors cannot delete their posts, and we will not delete paid posts. However, we reserve the right to delete posts in the future for any reason. You can request that we delete your non-paid post.

If We Discontinue or Sell This Website

There’s always the possibility we will not be able to keep up this website in the future. In the event this website ends or changes hands, we’ll pay out remaining payments before it does so (except in the case of the owner’s demise). After that, what happens to existing content will be the decision of the new site owner.

With sponsored posts, we will only refund the payment if the post has been on the site for a year or less when we remove it or when the website ownership changes. Then, we will prorate the amount by the time it’s been published.

Requesting Payment and Payment Fees

After your first paid post is accepted, your role will change to “contributor.” In your member account, under the “More” tab, you’ll find a tab called “My Earnings,” where you can view a list of your posts and current (unpaid) earnings. When your balance reaches $10 or more, you may request payment with a button on that page.

We reserve the right to raise this threshold if we find that the per-transaction fees are becoming too high.

Any payment generated by per-word fees is eligible AFTER publication. We do not pay for submitted and unpublished posts.

We pay via PayPal. You can enter your PayPal address in that area. You MUST have a PayPal account. We do not send out personal checks, cash, money orders, credit card payments, etc.

We will only initiate payments without request if your balance reaches $100 or if we either decide to discontinue the paid writing program or can no longer run this website—in that case, we’ll initiate paying out whatever balances are remaining. We may also initiate payments ourselves if we decide to change payment terms so that the amount we owe you does not inadvertently change.

We usually attempt to pay within three business days of your request. However, we do like to travel. If we anticipate being away and unavailable, we will notify the author group in advance.

Audience Reach and Promotion

We do not guarantee any specific reach for your post or promotion. Depending on the subject, we will likely share your standard post on our social media channels and email newsletter. You are welcome to promote your post on your social channels as well. We often delay sharing just a bit, as currently, we post to draft status on social media channels and then edit.

Profile Completeness

Your author name and box will link to your profile on our website. Before we publish your post, we may ask that you complete at least a custom user avatar and cover image and some other areas of your user profile.

For paid authors, we will require a certain level of profile completeness.

Your post (at least standard posts) will have an author box, which may enable logged-in members to contact you with questions. This has been fine, but we do have user-blocking tools if you run into anyone who is using the contact or connect button inappropriately.

Links: Affiliate, doFollow, Sponsored, oh my!

It is in keeping with best practices to add the rel=”sponsored” tag to paid links. In keeping with that, we will add that tag to links in sponsored posts. We will also add that to any affiliate links that do not already have that.

If we find affiliate links in content that qualify for payment, we will replace them with our own affiliate links.

If you want to write a product review with your affiliate links and remove that post from the possibility of any payment from us, you may use affiliate links, though it is always up to us what we’ll allow a post on our website to link out to.

Links that are not paid links and are truly necessary to the post content may be dofollow. We make that decision.

AI-generated Content

The only place we allow a small, AI-generated snippet of writing is in glossary entries. Then, it must be disclosed as such with a heading and must only be a very small part of the overall content.

You MAY use an AI generated image for a featured image, but please be careful with this and mention the source of your image in the post.

Editing

We reserve the right to edit your post without contacting you unless we feel those edits are large and significant.

We may check with you for review before scheduling your post for publication, but we’ll likely schedule it without a preview.

Material Submitted in the Past

Posts submitted before April 11, 2024, are not eligible for payment.

No Guarantee of Time Frame for Publication

Please allow us ample time to review and consider your submission. Additionally, we may schedule your post significantly later to space out member-submitted posts, posts of a similar type, or according to our budget limits.

Ads

We will show ads in your post, unless it is a sponsored post. We block ads in sponsored posts.

Removal from the paid writers’ program

We may remove contributors for the paid writers program (i.e., change their user role) for several reasons:

• Being repeatedly reported for spamming or blocked by other members, which would lead to a user being blocked in general, will remove you from the contributor program.
• If you start repeatedly submitting content that we consider unpublishable.
• You are being argumentative for no good cause or causing issues in the authors/contributors group.
• If your paid posts are not generating any bonuses AND you have not contributed content for the past year. We may pay any remaining amount over $10 and then change your role to “member” unless you want to submit a new post before that.
• Or, of course, if we decide to stop paying writers for content. We’ll pay out any accrued earnings in that case.
• If we find you are reloading pages, clicking on ads, or doing other things to try to determine and affect how we may be deciding on bonuses, we will remove you from paid authorship.

Hopefully, we will have already paid you for any per-post or per-word articles; if not, we’ll pay you before changing your status unless it was for the last reason on the list. In that case, we’d deduct any potential bonuses from the amount paid. If we remove you as a paid writer, we can keep the paid content on our website.

Yes, we do accept some sponsored posts and content. If you wish to submit a guest post but your post is overtlt promoting a product, business, or service, we considered that sponsored and ask for payment.

What are sponsored posts?

A sponsored post is one that is promoting a brand. If you are an individual and want to submit a recipe, write your thoughts about visiting Seattle, or whatnot, that’s not a sponsored post.

But if you’re a brand or business and are linking to your business, it is a sponsored post.

Do you “dofollow” links in sponsored content?

It is considered best practice to tag sponsored and paid links with rel=”sponsored,” so this is what we do with promotional links.

Will my post be labeled as sponsored content?

In keeping with best practices, we will disclose your post as being sponsored in the early part of the post. We’ll likely add something such as “this was sponsored by” or “this is a sponsored post which means…”

Will PNW & Beyond write something for me?

We cannot give you a definitive answer on this as it is situational. From time to time we get invited to various media previews and if it’s something we want to attend and have time for and doesn’t cost us a great deal to get to, we will choose to do that at no charge. It depends on the event.

Same goes for reviewing a product. If it’s something we’re into, like bike computers, we might want to review it.

Writing a post, however, actually takes quite a bit of time especially if you consider photography, SEO, etc.

If you are interested in us writing sponsored content for you, please contact us.

Will there be ads on my post?

We do not feel there should be ads on sponsored posts. We block ads on sponsored posts, or at least make every attempt to (once in a while we find an auto ad creeping back in where it shouldn’t be and have to make adjustments).

How much does a sponsored post cost?

We may vary the price of a sponsored post. Use the form below to view our current asking price.

However, the form is set up a “pay what you will” so we can make adjustments for special circumstances.

The “recommended” value here is for sponsored posts that you submit. Anything else, and you shoud inquire in advance.

Sponsored post payment form

How long will my sponsored post be on your website?

Once we publish a sponsored post, it generally will be on our website “for the life of this blog.” Which means that, in the future, if we need to stop writing this blog or if it changes hands the post will be taken down as then it will be out of our control. But unless there is some extenuating reason (such as excessively negative feedback for a particular post) we’ll leave it up for the life of this blog.

Do you offer refunds for sponsored content?

If, for some reason, your post is up for less than a year, we’ll do a partial refund prorated for the time it was “live” on the website. Otherwise, we do not do refunds for sponsored content and do not guarantee any particular amount of traffic or promotion. We’ll generally share our sponsored post on our social media channels.

Thanks!

From time to time, we get asked if “will you add a link to my blog” into an existing article, so we added this FAQ on the subject.

In most cases, the answer is “no.” While we don’t want to sound mean, about 90% of such requests offer a link that really has nothing to do with the article at hand or in which the page the link goes to is pretty content-free.

For instance, we received a request to link to a page that had nothing more than an address for a popular tourist location and a photo of it!

Before you ask us to add a link into our page, please consider whether your link is applicable to the topic of the page, and whether it adds any value to readers of that page.

Also consider this: will you link back to us?

One place where we more often will consider adding links is to our PNWWiki pages in which we have a “related resources” section. If your link is to a page that is directly about the topic at hand, we’ll be more likely to consider placing it there than in an existing main post.

We generally do not consider paid link placements and if we ever did, we’d disclose it, and add rel=”sponsored to it in keeping with best SEO practices.

If you want to get a link on our site, perhaps you could consider adding a guest post on one of the topics we like to cover.

Thanks for your understanding!

Yes, we do accept some sponsored posts and content. If you wish to submit a guest post but your post is overtlt promoting a product, business, or service, we considered that sponsored and ask for payment.

What are sponsored posts?

A sponsored post is one that is promoting a brand. If you are an individual and want to submit a recipe, write your thoughts about visiting Seattle, or whatnot, that’s not a sponsored post.

But if you’re a brand or business and are linking to your business, it is a sponsored post.

Do you “dofollow” links in sponsored content?

It is considered best practice to tag sponsored and paid links with rel=”sponsored,” so this is what we do with promotional links.

Will my post be labeled as sponsored content?

In keeping with best practices, we will disclose your post as being sponsored in the early part of the post. We’ll likely add something such as “this was sponsored by” or “this is a sponsored post which means…”

Will PNW & Beyond write something for me?

We cannot give you a definitive answer on this as it is situational. From time to time we get invited to various media previews and if it’s something we want to attend and have time for and doesn’t cost us a great deal to get to, we will choose to do that at no charge. It depends on the event.

Same goes for reviewing a product. If it’s something we’re into, like bike computers, we might want to review it.

Writing a post, however, actually takes quite a bit of time especially if you consider photography, SEO, etc.

If you are interested in us writing sponsored content for you, please contact us.

Will there be ads on my post?

We do not feel there should be ads on sponsored posts. We block ads on sponsored posts, or at least make every attempt to (once in a while we find an auto ad creeping back in where it shouldn’t be and have to make adjustments).

How much does a sponsored post cost?

We may vary the price of a sponsored post. Use the form below to view our current asking price.

However, the form is set up a “pay what you will” so we can make adjustments for special circumstances.

The “recommended” value here is for sponsored posts that you submit. Anything else, and you shoud inquire in advance.

Sponsored post payment form

How long will my sponsored post be on your website?

Once we publish a sponsored post, it generally will be on our website “for the life of this blog.” Which means that, in the future, if we need to stop writing this blog or if it changes hands the post will be taken down as then it will be out of our control. But unless there is some extenuating reason (such as excessively negative feedback for a particular post) we’ll leave it up for the life of this blog.

Do you offer refunds for sponsored content?

If, for some reason, your post is up for less than a year, we’ll do a partial refund prorated for the time it was “live” on the website. Otherwise, we do not do refunds for sponsored content and do not guarantee any particular amount of traffic or promotion. We’ll generally share our sponsored post on our social media channels.

Thanks!

This is a general Advertising FAQ page. Also refer to our FAQ about sponsored posts. We may made additions to this page as we go. If you want to ask a question that is not answered here, please use the ask a question button on the FAQ page.

Where can I purchase advertising?

If you are interested in advertising on our site, you can purchase ad space on our advertising page.

Where will my ads be shown?

Please note that we do use contextual advertising, but are adding some of our own ad placements in various areas and are offering per-click or per-impression ads in those slots. Prices will be shown on the individual ad product.

Ad placement slots.

You can choose from various placement slots:

Reserved ad space

Your ads will be scheduled to be shown in rotation with other ads set for that rotation. However, if the ads currently scheduled in that space are our ads, your ads, along with other ads from our own advertisers, will be given priority for display. We do not share rotation space between contextual ads and our own ad placements.

Currently, we do not have a flat rate per month set up nor do we have an ad space per advertiser set up. We cannot guarantee a specific level of traffic, so we prefer to charge based on the visibility of, or response to the ad. However, if you would like to place an ad on a monthly basis and have your ad in that slot 100% of the time we can discuss it.

Per-page or geolocated placements

We can tailor your ad to appear on specific pages or in certain geographic locations. However, those options are not available on the ad setup page. If you would like your ad to only appear on certain categories, or certain pages, please let us know via a note when you place your order and we can take care of that when we approve your ad.

Refunds

We do not give refunds for unused advertising funds EXCEPT in the event that we either discontinue or transfer this website. In that case, we’ll either refund unused funds or ask you if you’d like to continue with the new site owners.

We recommend you start small and try it out before making a large advertising purchase. Depending on your placement and ad, it may take a while to use those funds.

Tracking and fraud protection

We have protection in place that limits ads after a certain number of clicks by the same user to avoid click fraud.

We have ads turned off for admin so that we can work on our website without generating impressions. However, it is sometimes necessary for us to look at ads to see how they are displaying. We will try to note which ads we see and adjust tracking for impressions we generated in that case.

Once your ad is approved we can share front-end tracking link with you so you can see how your ad is doing.

Again if this Advertising FAQ didn’t answer all your questions, visit the FAQ page to ask one or contact us.

I’m sorry if I was delayed in answering this question! Somehow I had did not get notified that there was a new question on the site!

That’s a BIG question as there are so many types of events!

Are you looking for a certain type of event or in a certain location?

We’re doing our best to add more events to our calendar — right now, in general we either are adding events local organizers submit to us, ones that catch our attention, or ones that we can update annually such as larger festivals in the PNW.

I’m sorry if I was delayed in answering this question! Somehow I had did not get notified that there was a new question on the site!

That’s a BIG question as there are so many types of events!

Are you looking for a certain type of event or in a certain location?

We’re doing our best to add more events to our calendar — right now, in general we either are adding events local organizers submit to us, ones that catch our attention, or ones that we can update annually such as larger festivals in the PNW.

We added a convenient click-to-open popup to some of our event pages to let organizers know of current issues of which we’re aware and working on, and to answer some questions about editing events or making changes if you’ve found your event or event location on our calendar.

If we enter the same information in too many places, we may forget to edit every instance, so what we’re going to do here is add the popup to this page. If you’d like to read it, click the button below. It can be conveniently closed when you are finished.

If you received an email saying that you are a community events organizer or a related email saying that you’ve received points or a badge for being such, congrats!

This means that you’ve published enough events on our website with the right information and that we know who you are and feel confident enough in the events you contribute that we feel comfortable allowing you to publish your own events — which means that they will go “live” when you publish them without waiting for us to review them.

We still may go in and make edits — in the excerpt, for instance, which we unfortunately cannot seem to get onto our event contribution form.

You do not need to love the points and badges. We think it’s fun but our system does send out emails when points or achievements get generated. To change your preferences on that, you can do so here.

If you submitted an event to our calendar, and would like to edit it, you may contact us via email with your event change request OR if you are logged in and repeatedly submit events to our calendar, we may have given you “event contributor” status with the ability to publish and edit your own events. If so, you can find you events in the “my events” tab on your profile, accessible from the “me” link at the top of the website or at a URL like https://www.pnwbeyond.com/user/(your username here).

These are terms and rules for group creation on our website. By creating a group, you agree to these. If you have questions, ask a question on our FAQ page.

Thanks for your interest in creating a group on Pacific Northwest and Beyond. Before you create a group, please observe the following:

Who can create a group?

Group creation is limited to logged-in members who have not been restricted for violating community rules.

What types of groups can I create?

We prefer groups that have something to do with subjects on this website. We do have an “Other” category for groups so we can add some groups to do with things like recipes (if and when we add them) or complaining about WordPress. But the “Other” category is not a free for all and we will limit some groups.

Group Removal

Groups have reporting features and we also usually note when new groups are created.

We will remove groups that:

If you’ve left a comment as a visitor, you might find that you used to have a crazy monster-looking avatar. Then, maybe, your avatar suddently looked like this (though, somehow, we doubt you’ve noticed):

Now, maybe, it looks like this (or something else if we’ve now set another avatar since we’ve written this):

Or maybe you’ve even logged in and submitted something and find that your avatar looks like the above only a bit darker.

We made the decision, recently, to stop using Gravatars on our website.

Gravatar is a WordPress service that pulls an image that you link with your email. So it’s nice in that it will pull up images set by visitors who leave a comment. But it also means that for each avatar there is, a request is made to secure.gravatar.com — which can impact speed. We have enough going on here that we will speed up things where we can and this was one of those things.

If you’d like to add your own avatar image on this website, you can easily do so if you log in and then go to your user profile. You can find a link in the menu.

When you’re there, hover over or click on your image and you’ll get the chance to upload your own, custom, avatar. You can also hover over the top corner of your cover image to find where you can change that. You can also find links to do so in the profile settings menu.

If you have an account, you can export your data, manage individual items, or delete your account completely. When you’re logged in, visit your name in the menu, and under that you’ll see a link for “profile and account settings.”

Go there and under account settings, you’ll see options to request a data export or to delete your account.

To delete individual items, you can do that yourself. Please understand that we do not allow members to self-delete or edit some old comment items and forum topics as they may have responses that could render any responses to that comment to be viewed in a different light.

If you have questions about this, please contact us or ask a question using the Ask a Question button on our FAQ page.

Thank you.

If you’re getting unwanted messages via our membership system, we’re sorry.

Or if you’re seeing something that is offensive, misleading, or that’s just spam in groups or in member activity or discussion, thank you in advance for reporting it to us.

We cannot be everywhere and do not necessarily get an email every time somebody adds something.

So we’ve implemented a moderation system. If a member is bugging you by sending you private messages, you can block them from the member directory or report them with a flag on their member directory card or on their profile header, which you will see when you hover.

Or if you see a group that should not be there, same thing — there’s a report flag on the group header or the group card. You’ll also find that you can report items in individual activities.

If a member gets enough reports/complaints about an item, they may be auto-suspended for a time based on the nature of the report or complaint.

We reserve the right, ultimately, to block someone who is consistently reported or remove content at our discretion.

If you received an email saying that you are a community events organizer or a related email saying that you’ve received points or a badge for being such, congrats!

This means that you’ve published enough events on our website with the right information and that we know who you are and feel confident enough in the events you contribute that we feel comfortable allowing you to publish your own events — which means that they will go “live” when you publish them without waiting for us to review them.

We still may go in and make edits — in the excerpt, for instance, which we unfortunately cannot seem to get onto our event contribution form.

You do not need to love the points and badges. We think it’s fun but our system does send out emails when points or achievements get generated. To change your preferences on that, you can do so here.

If you subscribed to browser notifications and want to unsubscribe, you can do so using the button above OR find a bell icon in the lower right corner of your screen. The bell icon may be quite tiny until you hover over it. Thus far, we have not been successful with replacing it with a larger icon or resizing it.

If you click on the button above, you’ll be presented with a popup with some options. Most of these apply to getting notifications about membership functions and notices. Unfortunately, we don’t have a way to subscribe or unsubscribe members specifically from notifications about articles.

If you log in and want to customize notifications about which types of member notifications you receive through your browser, you can do so by going to your account settings in your profile, where you’ll find a “push notification” option. There, you can opt in to get notifications about groups, requests, invites, etc.

You can also subscribe or unsubscribe to notifications for individual groups by clicking a subscribe button either on the group main page or on the group card in the groups directory.

If you can log in, please use the tab you’ll find in the “more” dropdown in your user profile where you can access a contact form for concerns or errors. If you are having difficulty with registering or logging in, please visit our contact page and use that form.

If you have a general question that might benefit all users of this website, please ask a question using the “Ask a Question” button either on the FAQ page or from a FAQ tab in your member profile.

Our membership functions provided facilities for hosting user-created groups, and we like that idea — both to allow members to set up some discussion channels, if they would like, as well as for us to create groups to get content in one space for like-minded members. We’ll see what use we put it to in the future!

For a time, we tried sitewide forums. However, as each group can have its own forum, we felt that hosting sitewide forums as well was confusing.

Any member can create a group by following a button on the Groups page. We ask that you keep it to topics that are “safe for work” and reserve the right to delete groups and block members that violate this policy or create a bunch of unrelated spam groups.

Each group can have its own forum. Member can post updates to the activity page but the group forums can provide a discussion format between members.

Groups may also add media and create albums.

If you have a more specific question about groups and group setup, or how to join a group and don’t see it in our FAQs, click the Ask a Question button on the FAQ page where you most likely accessed this page.

At the end of January 2024, we made a few changes to user roles on the website to make it easier to filter out spam registrations. If this is the reason, except for the name of your user role, there should be no change to the capabilities you have if you are a normal user of this website.

From time to time, we change specific user’s roles and capabilities — often it’s to get post authors the “author” or “contributor” role. Other times it may be to allow frequent publishers of events to have more capabilities.

And, unfortunately, sometimes we downgrade a users’ role due to spam or behavior (though this does not happen too often).

You’ll find a link to set up two factor authentication in your account settings. You can find that if you go to your user profile and find the dropdown under your avatar. Click “account settings.”

When you click the two-factor-authentication link, you’ll be provided with a QR code or a text and numerical code to do your signup.

Our 2FA uses only the Google Authenticator app.

Follow the instructions to set up 2FA. Make sure to save your emergency codes in case you get locked out as we might not be able to help you with this if you don’t. The email address, here, should be the email address you use for your account on this website.

After you successfully set up 2fa, when you log in, you’ll encounter the 2FA form where you’ll enter the six-digit code provided by the Google Authenticator app. Once you’ve entered six digits, the form should automatically submit and then log you in.

When you are logged in, you’ll find a link to access your user pages in the header of the website (or the mobile menu if you’re using a phone). The URL for your main profile page will be something like https://www.pnwbeyond.com/member/myusername .

From here you can access shop purchases and downloads, delete your account, update your address. You can also, if you choose, update your social media links to share, and can access any posts you’ve written on the website, start or join groups, etc.

We wanted to cut down on spam registrations — but, as we have a shop on our website, we didn’t want to require that we approve each and every registration.

So we have double opt-in required for registration. Which means that, after you register, the website sends you an email with a link to confirm that you actually want to register. You need to click the link to confirm…then you should be able to log in.

Unfortunately, sometimes our email goes to spam. If you were expecting an email from us and did not receive it, the first thing to do is to check your spam folder. If you find a confirmation email from us there, could you please mark it as not being spam? Then click the link to complete your registration.

If you cannot find the email anywhere, you can contact us and tell us the name and email with which you registered and we can resend the confirmation email or enable the registration for you.

If you confirmed your registration but, then, cannot log in, please try doing a password reset. If that doesn’t work, please let us know what error you are encountering.

Thanks for your interest in subscribing to keep up with what we’re posting!

If you subscribed from one of the forms in a page or post, you likely were subscribed to “general newsletters” and a specific content area depending on the page on which you subscribed. We think “keep it simple” is best for most.

But for those who really want to get specific, we have a LOT of options on our Newsletters page.

However, the way our form setup works, it’s difficult to get really specific there about email newsletter frequency of our various lists.

Here’s the email newsletter frequency FAQ to make it easier for you to find what you want:

Email Newsletter Frequency and What Type of Content You’ll Receive

General Newsletters

“General newsletters.” Our intention, here is to start sending out a larger email newsletter on a quarterly basis again which will include some content you may have missed or even some content that’s not directly a post from our website. It will include multiple different types of content.

You may also get an occasional newsletter if we need to sent out an important notification about our website to all subscribers.

But, in general, this selection won’t see you getting too many emails from us.

One of Everything

One of everything is for people who REALLY want it all. But you won’t get it ALL by subscribing to this. Our site was initially created as a PNW and travel blog. We have other areas where we might post about…recipes or other things. HOWEVER, subscribe here and you’ll get a daily email whenever we publish a new main post about the PNW, travel, local events, photography, cycling, gear reviews, other outdoor activities…

But it will NOT contain new recipes, new items from our shop, notifications about any contests, raffles, giveaways, etc, nor will it contain information about new groups or features on our website or “about the blog” type posts.

Weekly Everything

Weekly everything is…just that, or at least it will be soon. This newsletter gets sent with any new main content that we’ve published that week, and if we’ve published a new post, we’ll ALSO add extra stuff onto it — notifications about any new recipes, trivia, polls, giveaways, etc. It will, however NOT contain shop content.

“Hubs”

If you see a selection that has the word “hub” in it, that is a monthly newsletter on that topic.
It may be a mix of things related to that topic. For instance, in the cycling hub newsletter, you might find bike posts, bike gear reviews, a book about cycling if we’ve reviewed one, upcoming cycling events. However, a newsletter will only get published that month if we’ve published at least one main post in that area. Recipes and is also like a hub page, and is monthly.

Raffles and Contents

At the point I’m writing this, we haven’t done a raffle for some time — but I think they’re fun and we’re thinking of doing little raffles again. As raffles are a time-sensitive thing, new raffles will be sent out whenever one starts to run. You might also get notified of upcoming raffles in a general newsletter.

New Groups

This is sort of a “whenever” newsletter as we need to configure it individually when there are new groups. We may try to customize it a bit – for instance, if we see you’ve subscribed to new groups and you subscribe to “Bike Hub” and we see there’s a new bike group, we’ll let you know about it.

PNWWiki

This is our glossary section. What we’ll post there is a grab bag of new terms. We may add relevant ones to individual hub newsletters, but if you subscribe to this, you’ll get a weekly list of new additions sent to you.

Shop

We have disabled our shop page. We realized that we made most of our sales of our enamel pins and such things on Etsy, and doing machine embroidery was keeping us from doing the things we really like. However, we may be using our ecommerce features on an occasional basis to list some items. If we do send out any shop emails it will be on an individual and not very frequent basis.

News about our calendar for event organizers

This is just a list for updates on the status of our calendar in case we make any important changes.

Member features and news and Blog News and Announcements

This will be sent out weekly if we’ve posted anything new that week that’s on the status of our blog, new features on our website, etc. “State of the blog” sort of stuff for one, new features for another.

New Polls

These will be sent out on a per-post basis as polls are sometimes time-oriented. The poll may be about anything and may be user-submitted. We may add subject appropriate polls to our hub newsletters.

Off-Topic Posts

This is a grab bag. Occasionally, we might want to write something to add information to, for instance, our machine embroidery if we keep doing that. Or we might be just dying to write something WordPress – related. Or an opinion piece.

Off topic posts is like a box of chocolates…

You will end up with…polls, trivia quizzes, both on and off-topic, recipes, craft posts, WordPress posts, opinions, and blog news…whatever goes into the “off topic” section.

We will send this on a weekly digest basis.

New Galleries

We’re finally getting our photo galleries together. If you subscribe to new galleries, you’ll get a weekly digest of any new galleries we’ve added that week. Just a caveat: we are currently adding some old galleries to the gallery pages we’ve just set up, so you may get notified about existing galleries as we re-add them, depending on when you subscribe.

“New galleries” does not include member or group galleries unless we specifically decide to feature them, but the galleries here MAY be ones that accept content from members.

In the Future

We may add additional lists — or remove lists that no longer apply. You will NOT be automatically subscribed to any new lists, but we may add a notification about it in our quarterly newsletter “what’s new” section.

Wait! Don’t hit the spam button!

If you received an email asking you to confirm your subscription to our email newsletter(s) and didn’t try to subscribe to emails, we’ve very sorry!

But not to worry! If you don’t click the confirm button or link, you won’t be signed up to our email list.

Like many to most websites we keep an email list for subscribers who want to be notified about new content.

However, anyone — bots or humans — can come along and enter an email address into a subscribe form.

So we have double optin enabled to prevent unsuspecting people from getting automatically signed up for our email list. If there’s an attempt to sign up for our email newsletters with your email address, a confirmation email will go out asking you to confirm that you really want to sign up. Don’t click the button and you will not be signed up.

We’ve also received questions about it “creating an account.” Receiving a newsletter confirmation email does NOT mean an “account” was created for you on our website. However, our registration process does have a newsletter checkbox. Chances are, if you get this email and did not try to subscribe, it was a bot trying to subscribe through one of our forms. But if you’re concerned, we’ll check and make sure no account was created for you if you contact us. However, there’s very little chance that this happened UNLESS you also received an email asking for account confirmation as we also have two-step subscription for user accounts.

While we’d love to have you subscribe to our email newsletters and updates, we don’t believe that anyone should be signed up who truly does not want to be.

Thanks for subscribing!

In email newsletters that we send, you should find a link which will take you to a page where you can change your preferences. Please note that accessing this page directly will not work because it requires you to go there from your individual link.

If you want to see a subscribe form on our website and want to ADD that content area to one to which you’re already subscribed, you CAN fill out the form again using the same email address and it should merge that selection to your already subscribed areas.

Please note that this only applies to email newsletters. Things like website-generated emails, group email subscriptions, etc are managed separately.

If you are subscribed to our email newsletters and wish to unsubscribe, you’ll find a link to unsubscribe in the individual newsletter.

The way our newsletters are managed, if you just visit the site and visit the preferences page, you won’t see anything but if you follow the unsubscribe link, you’ll unsubscribe.

We also have set up an unsubscribe header in our emails, so you should be able to click “unsubscribe” from your email client and we should get a notification to unsubscribe you if it does not unsubscribe you directly — but this is in the beta stage in our opinion, so we hope that will work.

Unsubscribing from the unsubscribe link, however, is reliable.

Please note this only applies to our email list. Other emails from our website, such as group emails, member notifications, etc, are managed separately.’

Additionally, you’ll also note a link in the emails that will allow you to access a page to update your preferences, in case you wish to stay subscribed but want fewer emails or a different content area.

If, for some reason, you are having difficulty unsubscribing, please contact us and let us know the email you subscribed with and we can manually unsubscribe you.

If you’re here, you likely clicked the “Already a Subscriber?” message in a Google popup. These popups do not necessarily know if you have previously subscribed, created a login, etc.

If you have already subscribed to our newsletters or created an account on this website, there’s nothing more to do. If you want to UNSUBSCRIBE, you can do that from a link in any email we send via our email newsletter list. The newsletters create their own special unsubscribe link that ensures the email you signed up with is unsubscribed.

If you created an account on this website and wish to edit it, you can log in and do so from your profile page. If you want to delete your account, you can delete it from your profile page.

If you’re here, you probably came here from one of the “cooperative” galleries on our website.

The gallery system that we use allows for user uploads, but with some restrictions. Most commonly we use cooperative galleries on glossary pages or on location map pages so that users can share their own images if they’d like.

Before you upload an image, please observe and agree to the following:

• The photos in “cooperative” galleries are different from user media in profiles or groups. Photos you upload to cooperative galleries will not appear in your user media; they are separate systems. However, you can ALSO upload the photos to your user media.
• For safety reasons, photos uploaded to cooperative galleries are moderated. We do not necessarily receive notifications every time someone uploads a photo, so we check every few days on average for any new photos. Please allow us ample time to review yours. Our system does not send out an email for these when they are approved or rejected.
• Photos must be:
  • “Safe for work”
  • Your own images — or you have the right to share them. If they are an old public domain image please cite this.
  • Apply to the subject of the gallery in question.
• Author information is not automatically put on the images in these galleries. However, we’ve set them up so you can add your name and a custom link so that you get credited for your image and can link to your own profile here on the site or on your own website.
• We may share images we like on social media. If we do, we’ll credit you (of course). If you would like us to, you may want to let us know your social link (i.e. your @ name on Instagram, for instance).
• You must be registered and logged in to submit a photo. We do this so we can know who submitted the photo and to decrease spam submissions, which would happen if we did not require login.
• There is no way for users to delete photos they have submitted. If you would like to delete a photo from one of these galleries, you can contact us.
• We will not try to sell your photo in one of our for sale galleries. Sometimes we pull photos by their tag; please do not tag your photo with anything like “stock photography,” etc because it may accidentally end up in one of those galleries.
• We may, in the future, use photos for various contests. We will ask your permission about such things first before we enter your photos in any contests or polls.

This website comprises a bunch of different sections. There are event locations, route and map locations, posts, photos, events, routes.

At some point, the idea occured to me to create a glossary section to, hopefully, be able to collect information about these different items all one one, central page, as well as to create a fun section that I could add to little by little with things I might not necessarily want to add as a post: specific pieces of street art, PNW folklore, individual birds — and allow website users to also add terms or suggest edits. Additionally, I found myself wanting to write a bit about bike gear or photography terms.

For more information about PNWWiki, you can visit our PNWWiki Page.

OK, we’ll admit we just added this so we’d have something showing in the section on our FAQ page and other places where this appears.

To know more about our social accounts, visit this page. Or use the Ask a Question button to ask a question.

This shipping policy applies to items we sell on our website and not on third-party venues.

Shipping Speed

We aim to ship in-stock items within two business days (M-F) of receiving the order. Often, we ship faster than that but we say two days to give ourselves a bit of leeway!

If we are offering customized items, those items will (of course) take longer. We will try to give an estimate on the product page itself but generally allow us two weeks or so to ship a customize item — if it coincides with us closing shop for a bit to go on vacation, we’ll let you know.

Shipping Methods

We’ve started using calculated shipping again. We ship our items via USPS exclusively at this time. You should get a shipping rate quoted in the cart based on your order and location. If the cart is not returning rates please contact us and let us know.

Packaging

At the time we’re writing this, all of our current physical items are small jewelry like pins. These, we generally ship in bubble mailers. We are working on using up our stock of plastic bubble mailers and have compostable ones ready to go when those are used up!

If and when we start offering mugs or larger items again, we’re going to try as much as we can to use less plastic. Some of our pins are packed in cello bags.

When you are logged in, you’ll find a link to access your user pages in the header of the website (or the mobile menu if you’re using a phone). The URL for your main profile page will be something like https://www.pnwbeyond.com/member/myusername .

From here you can access shop purchases and downloads, delete your account, update your address. You can also, if you choose, update your social media links to share, and can access any posts you’ve written on the website, start or join groups, etc.

During the pandemic I got started with machine embroidery and while it’s not my primary focus right now, at the current time I plan to list some of my existing files and create a few more — hopefully more with an outdoorsy or PNWest-y theme (the furbies and things like that were for my daughter).

Please note the following if you are ordering machine embroidery files:

• I test MOST of my files on a single-needle machine. A few of my older ones were developed and tested on an older multi-needle machine but I no longer have that.
• The files that I list have all been tested at their current size. However, I test with a thick cut-away stabilizer (generally Sulky Cutaway Plus) and on Kona Cotton. I do NOT guarantee that the file will work on every type of fabric. You may need to test the design with a different stabilizer for different types of fabric. Additionally, I have a Brother machine and test with PES files. I include other file types but cannot test on every type of machine.
• PES files were created with whatever the version of PES was at the time.
• I do NOT give refunds on downloadable/digital products. I will try to help as much as I can if you are experiencing a problem and I am available. I do go away sometimes to take camping trips, bike rides, etc…so I will respond as promptly as I can.
• I do NOT do free resizing, edits, etc. Doing that takes time. In the future, I may add options for having the file resized. However, sizing up or down dramatically can be problematic and I will not test resized designs as it takes fabric, thread, and lots of time — all of which are expensive.
• I am not a factory and do not mass-produce t-shirts, etc. Sometimes, I may choose to make items with embroidery and sell them but I can only do so in small quantities.

To view our return policy or access our return form, please go to our returns page.

Currently, if we add downloadable items again, we will sell outside of the US, of course. But, for now, we are only shipping items within the US. We may offer shipping outside the US in the future. Note that we also sell some of the same items in our Etsy shop which will calculate appropriate shipping outside of the United States.

If you are wondering why, read on…

At some point, we decided to take down our shop. The way we had set it up was…complex, to say the least. Especially for the stuff we were selling. I won’t go into details. But we decided that we liked having a shop on our website with the option to run our own sales, etc, separate from the other venues where we sell stuff. We didn’t want handmade items and selling things to be our primary focus…but it does bring some proceeds in for the blog and we enjoy creating new things from time to time.

But most of our sales come from other venues. This time, we wanted to keep it more simple and we’re starting with just offering flat rate shipping on small items within the US. We may start to do calculated shipping again, later, if we find ourselves introducing larger items or decide to start shipping outside the US.

If you subscribed to browser notifications and want to unsubscribe, you can do so using the button above OR find a bell icon in the lower right corner of your screen. The bell icon may be quite tiny until you hover over it. Thus far, we have not been successful with replacing it with a larger icon or resizing it.

If you click on the button above, you’ll be presented with a popup with some options. Most of these apply to getting notifications about membership functions and notices. Unfortunately, we don’t have a way to subscribe or unsubscribe members specifically from notifications about articles.

If you log in and want to customize notifications about which types of member notifications you receive through your browser, you can do so by going to your account settings in your profile, where you’ll find a “push notification” option. There, you can opt in to get notifications about groups, requests, invites, etc.

You can also subscribe or unsubscribe to notifications for individual groups by clicking a subscribe button either on the group main page or on the group card in the groups directory.

You might notice some polls on this website, or even wish you could add one — and the way they are set up might be a bit confusing, so this is an explanation.

There are two types of polls we have here: activity polls and sitewide polls.

Activity Polls

Activity polls are just for logged-in members. You can create a poll on your profile’s activity page by viewing the bottom row of buttons at the top where you post an activity.

You can select the visibility of the poll. However, public polls are only open to other logged-in members. A visitor who visits the poll on your profile will see it as read-only.

You can share your poll outside of your profile by using any of the social sharing buttons for the poll activity after it is posted — but to respond to the poll, someone will have to register and log in.

Sitewide Polls

We also have sitewide polls. These polls may be used in posts.

Members can create a new poll — you need to register, log in and then access the Create a Sitewide Poll tab which you’ll find under the More tab in your membership profile.

If you want us to create a new post for your poll, we can do that. You can also create a poll if you’re writing a post for this website and want to create a poll. You’ll find more information on the page with the form.

You can, of course, share sitewide polls to your profile but they are not posted there by default, though if we create a post for you, that WILL be shared to your profile.

If you’re here, you followed this link from the copyright link in one of our photos or videos.

For this license it is either ©Cheryl Dimof or © Pacific Northwest and Beyond, LLC.

You may not use this photo without permission UNLESS you have purchased it in one of our galleries. Then, it is subject to the use policies on this page.

If you can log in, please use the tab you’ll find in the “more” dropdown in your user profile where you can access a contact form for concerns or errors. If you are having difficulty with registering or logging in, please visit our contact page and use that form.

If you have a general question that might benefit all users of this website, please ask a question using the “Ask a Question” button either on the FAQ page or from a FAQ tab in your member profile.

You are reading a post and the stream of the sentence is interrupted by an interjecting phrase in double paranthesis (( and )).

Imagine this is in a footnote under the post.

That is where it is supposed to be.

Unfortunately, the default setting of what we use to add footnotes is incompatible with a few features that use (( in their code — meaning that we have a bunch of footnotes in our pages which are now either not displaying and/or breaking the display of a page.

And, unfortunately, doing a search and replace on double parenthese could also end up wrecking something. So we’re being forced, over time, to replace any footnotes manually. We’ll get there. We’ll either replace them with new footnotes or just find a way to not write with footnotes so we’re not at the mercy of a footnotes plugin.

Thanks for your understanding.

I’m posting this as I’ve become aware that some posts from this website are ending up in news aggregators.

While we feel flattered that someone wants to repost our content, and love it when people share on social media or post a snippet on their own site with a link back, please consider the following if you are just taking our content outright and posting it on your website:

• While we have a feed, it is for the purposes of people being able to read our content or share with our subscribers. We have it set to “post excerpt” not full content.
• If you wish to repost on your blog using our RSS feeds. please:
  1. Be aware that we have more than one feed. The main one is for our main posts, but we have separate feeds for photography posts, for instance.
  2. DO NOT include the full content of our post.
  3. DO include a clear button with a link back to the original post AFTER THE EXCERPT.
  4. Ensure that the content identifies our original post as the canonical link for the content.
  5. ATTRIBUTE THE AUTHOR of the content. Do NOT assign yourself or “admin” as the author of the content. While many of our posts are by our editor, we DO have guest authors from time to time. Please give credit.
• Please consider that taking posts outright and republishing them without author attribution or canonical link is plagarism. If you wish to republish our content, either use our RSS feed with the guidelines above or ask our permission.
• If you’re wondering “well, you’ve used content from another blog…?” We will point out that: we either asked permission, were explicitly ASKED to do it by the publisher or author of the content. In the case of events, we see this vastly differently as we are promoting local events and generally add our own verbiage and always link back to the event in question.
  

This is a space to report suggestions for topics, readability, improving website features, etc. You can also use it to report issues you’re having.

Please do NOT use this space to report any private issues, such as shop orders.

Find the “Item FAQ” tab on the individual product page. There will be a button to submit your FAQ. It may already say “Successfully Submitted.” That’s a bug we’re working on. But, have no fear, add your text, press the button, and your FAQ will be submitted to us.

To avoid spammy FAQs, we approve each one. We’ll look at your question, do our best to answer it. And we THANK YOU in advance for using the FAQ so that others may benefit from the answer to your question.