TCHS Alumni News
Temple City High School, California
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Frequently Asked Questions

Members

Question: How do I manage privacy?
Answer: Contact data are private by default. You can reveal them if you choose.

Information they may appear to the public are your comments in public spaces such as a forum or a news article. These are associated with your profile, which is visible only to members. Your likeness may be shown in the context of public events you attend, such as reunions.

In your profile, your username (you chose it when you registered)), your portrait if uploaded, your membership history such as dates joined and last visit, and your complete history of personal comments. If you have written News articles they will also be linked from your profile (and only if a member is signed in, conversely from the article back to the profile).
Question: How do I find (contact..., etc.) a member?
Answer: Members may sign in and search the member roster alphabetically or by class year. A contact link is displayed on each member profile; members may send a private message by email through the system. The recipient is notified that a message is waiting and has options to read or reply. Contact data are not displayed.

Profile

Edit your member profile and add to "the conversation" with fellow alumni.
Question: My name contains multiple words. What should I do?
Answer: Surnames like du Maurier, von Humboldt, Ten Horst or de la Vega present a unique challenge. Most computer systems will sort them according to the first letter, which may not be the root word of the name. We suggest you enter your name as you normally write it, but we cannot guarantee how it will sort on every computer.
Question: Can I use a non-English name, not using the Roman alphabet?
Answer: Of course, if your keyboard allows it. However, if your name is 习近平, we recommend you enter it as Jinping Xi, even if you are the president of China. Once again, this is not about tradition; it's about building and sorting lists.
Question: Can I hyphenate or otherwise change the order of my names?
Answer: You may experiment with putting the parts of your name in different fielda. Please note that John-Paul may not sort in the same order as John Paul, and it may even appear differently in different browsers or operating systems. Although the naming conventions of your ancestors may have been different, we strongly urge that you use the modern American pattern.

Our name formatting convention is not about political correctness; it is about helping us to keep an accurate record that allows your classmates to identify you even if your name has changed.
Question: How should I enter my name into the system?
Answer: A typical example for a man might be John Martin Smith. A typical example for a single woman might be Mary (Jones) Brown indicating that Mary's maiden (unmarried) name was Jones and that she is or has been married to a Mr. Brown.

Usage

Who may participate, rules of use...
Question: Can I advertise in the Sponsor Directory?
Answer: Basic text ads are free for enrolled members, inexpensive for other community advertisers. Reach out to 25,000 alumni*.

To advertise, first become a member.

Advertising is available in several formats,

  • basic directory listing (free to enrolled alumni)
  • brochure (full page display with graphic and extended text)
  • website (whatever you can imagine, blog, catalog, image gallery, podcasting... and of course general purpose pages).
  • banners scattered within the site
  • premium banners on the home page
  • all forms include a link to your external web resources
  • all include do-it-yourself editing and optional editorial support
All advertising fees benefit alumni activities including this website.

More information is available in the editing tools within your profile.

* Not all alumni are registered users, but as of October 2020 we've had almost 8,000,000 page views.

Question: Can I publicize an event?
Answer: Events may be publicized in several ways.
1:Members of the site can post a brief announcement in an update from their profiles. These may include an external link and/or a graphic.
2:Others should write to the editors via the contact form linked at the bottom of every page.
3:Free events may be announced at no charge; if admission is charged, a modest fee is requested.
4:Only family-friendly events please.

Obituaries

We maintain a list of deceased former alumni as submitted by members.
Question: How do I review the obituaries?
Answer: Follow the adjacent link to the In-Memoriam page.

Security

TCHS Alumni News data management policies.
Question: Who has access to my data?
Answer: It is our policy that contact data for individuals—saved in profiles—is not published on the site. This includes your street address, telephone number(s) and email address(es).

A contact form is maintained on your personal page, and a user of the site can send you a private message, but you will receive a message from our system asking that you sign into the website to read it. The sender does not see your address. Naturally, if you reply by ordinary email, you will be revealing it.

If you post your contact data on your personal page or other plain text areas on the site or take other action to reveal it, we cannot, of course, prevent its distribution to all and sundry. The Web is inherently a public place.

Techniques

How to be a smart user.
Question: How can more people be attracted to the site?
Answer: If each person who reads this question invites two unregistered friends who register, and if each of those members tells two who tell two, then we will quickly register all alumni with only two invitations each.
Question: Can I read the site with just any computer and browser?
Answer: We can give you a definite MAYBE on that. Almost any browser should correctly display our text pages. However, to enjoy all the features of the system, you should have a modern computer and browser. We test the system with several popular browsers, and it "validates" using the standards published by the WWW technical consortium, but we cannot test every page of every feature against every browser.

Try this link, load the desired browser and click here to access the site. On arrival, bookmark us.

CROSS-PLATFORM. Widely used cross-platform browsers include Chrome, Safari, Opera, Firefox and others. We have few complaints from users of those systems.

UNIX. A couple of Unix folk have written to confirm that they can traverse the site problem free with contemporary versions of Firefox, Chrome and Opera.

MACINTOSH. We have virtually no problem reports from Mac users, who represent about forty percent of our page views. Safari is by far the preferred browser among our readers, followed by Firefox and Chrome. Instructions: Take your Mac out of the box; plug it in; turn it on; type the address of the site into your browser; press Enter; enjoy.

WINDOWS. Just because Internet Explorer (MSIE) or more recently Edge came with your computer does not mean you must use it. We recommend against any IE version before v.10. ALL IE versions before 10 are full of problems and are the home of popup windows, security holes, etc., as documented by the US Federal Government in 2004. Alternatives include Firefox, Chrome, Safari and others. We make no special attempt to accommodate Windows/IE-specific content and display quirks.

AOL, MSN... Proprietary browsers from "online services" are not tested by our staff. We have looked at the the system using AOL at friends' houses and have been able to read the site. Proprietary browsers are by their nature intended to keep you within the provider's world salivating over their popup ads. These services have declined in popularity in recent years and have ceased to be problems.

FILTERS. If you are running filtering software that purportedly protects you from OOOOOH, BAAAAD things on the Internet, it may also affect this site. Some filtering software attempts to read web addresses and "interpret" the filenames. This is referred to in the industry as "stupid." You are a grownup; this site is for grownups; turn the filters off.

TIME MARCHES ON. If you are still running that 133MHz machine you bought on sale in 1995 with the creaking copy of Netscape 3, abandon all hope; you will not see correct colors, page layout or many graphics, and many interactive features like the forums may not work at all. It's time for a new system. You'll get a lot more utility from your system, and since price/performance has improved along with energy efficiency, you'll be able to afford to use the savings to join the association. If cost is the problem, we suggest that a three-year-old computer is preferable to a 10-year-old computer.

(This unbiased commentary by your editors may be reprinted without permission—and preferably without attribution. )