1. If you are either a member, or a non-member who has already registered, log in to the site (if you haven't already done so) at www.iom3.org/login. If you are a non-member and have NOT already registered you will need to do so first at www.iom3.org/register. (IOM3 members do NOT need to register.)

2. Click on 'My profile'

3. Click on 'My alerts'

4. Select technical subjects of interest and/or regions by going to the 'Categories' tab and ticking the boxes. Choosing a subject category will mean you will receive notifications whenever content in that category is created. Choosing a region will mean you will receive notifications whenever events are created in that region, regardless of subject area. 

5. Email delivery defaults to 'hourly' - adjust this to your preference by clicking 'daily', 'weekly' or 'monthly' from the drop-down box to the right of each category

6. As each box is ticked, further options to receive alerts 'On updates' (when items are updated) or 'On comments' (when someone posts comments on those items) appear. Tick as preferred; you are recommended to tick 'On updates' to ensure you receive all the latest information

7. Optional: if you want to receive alerts on ALL of one content type (e.g. news, jobs, events) posted to the site regardless of subject category, click on the 'Content types' tab and make your choices

8. You can also watch forum topics without commenting by clicking 'Watch this topic' beneath the body of each topic or 'thread'. Alert delivery again defaults to hourly but you can adjust this by going to the 'threads' page in 'My alerts' and selecting the desired frequency alongside the relevant topic

9. To unsubscribe from alerts, simply log in, go to 'my profile' then 'my alerts', then into the categories, content types and threads sub-tabs, and untick whichever items you wish to stop receiving alerts for (or all of them, if you no longer wish to receive any alerts). Then click 'save' at the bottom of the page.

Questions? See below for more detailed instructions or contact us using our online enquiry form selecting the 'Website' category

When you log in to the site, you will see a link to ‘My profile’ appear near the top of the screen. Clicking that takes you to an overview of your website account details with a range of tabs linking to other services, which now include ‘My alerts’. Clicking here takes you by default to an overview of the items you have chosen to receive email notifications about.

Choosing your categories

If you navigate to the ‘categories’ page (the far right tab under ‘My alerts’) you will find a list of all subject categories covered by the Institute’s technical communities and in-house publications, grouped into materials, materials science & technology, processes and applications. There is also a list of UK geographical regions. Clicking the tick box next to any of these categories will activate the alerts service for that subject area or region. So for instance, if you tick the boxes marked composites, mining and automotive, the next time any news articles, features, events or jobs to do with composites, mining or automotive applications are added to the website, you will receive an alert about it. Similarly, if you choose alerts by region, the next time an event is created in a region you have chosen, you will receive an alert about that (regardless of subject matter).

All alerts are sent to the email address you have registered under ‘My profile’, so please make sure your email address is up to date!

Customising the frequency of notifications

You also have the ability to select, alongside each chosen category, the ‘send interval’ or frequency at which you wish to receive your alerts – either hourly, daily, weekly or monthly. This facility is adjustable per category, so for example you can select to receive one alert per week listing all items about composites added to the website within that week, but if you need to know about new mining content more often than that, you can select a daily or even hourly frequency for that subject area.

Next to the ‘send interval’ box are two more boxes, ‘on updates’ and ‘on comments’. These are left unticked by default, so you can tick either of them as required. If ‘on updates’ is ticked, you will receive alerts not only when a new item is published on the site but also when any existing items in that category are updated. You are recommended to tick 'on updates' to ensure you receive all the latest information. If ‘on comments’ is ticked, you will be notified whenever comments are made by other users on items in this category.

Note that all emails are in digest format, listing all relevant items in the email body. You will not be bombarded with individual emails for each item that gets posted to the website.

Getting updates on jobs and news

Returning now to the links under the ‘My alerts’ tab: the ‘types’ page allows you to sign up for alerts based on the type of content published, rather than the subjects covered. Currently you can sign up for alerts on news items, jobs, events, features and book reviews. Thus, if you would like to be notified about all news and jobs regardless of what these are about, click on ‘types’ under the main ‘My alerts’ tab and tick the 'news' and 'jobs' boxes on that page. To confirm: if you tick 'news' this means you will receive email alerts on ALL news items posted to the site at the interval of your choice - so because a lot of content is posted to the website on a daily basis covering many different subject areas, it is possible that you will receive a lot of emails if you select any specific content types.

Threads management for articles and forum topics

Finally, the ‘threads’ page lists any specific items on the website which you have commented on or wish to ‘watch’. (Depending on your actions on the website up to now, you may find one or two items already in here when you first go to this page.) The ‘threads’ page only allows you to manage current items, not add new ones; the selection of new items is done on the items themselves. So for instance if you are reading the article at www.iom3.org/news/trialling-times-credit-crunch and comment on this using the ‘add comment’ link at the bottom of the page, this article will appear in your ‘threads’ page, and you can then go there to refine your update preferences on that article.

The ‘threads’ page will also list any forum topics at www.iom3.org/forum that you have commented on or have expressed an interest in. Although you are encouraged to join the debate on the forums, you can simply click the ‘watch this topic’ link on any forum thread to receive alerts on comments posted there by others, without having to comment yourself. Again you can go to your ‘threads’ page to manage your alert preferences on the individual topics you have chosen to watch.

To stop receiving alerts about any thread simply untick the box to the left of the thread title in your ‘threads’ page. In the case of forum topics you can also go to the topic itself and click ‘stop watching this topic’ underneath the main thread body.

Please note it is not currently possible to be alerted when new forum topics are created, so you are strongly advised to visit forums of interest to you on a regular basis to check for any new discussions.

Email delivery

As stated above, all email alerts will arrive in the form of a digest, so – unless you have chosen a frequent delivery and many items are added to the site which match your preferences in that period – you won’t be bombarded with emails, but will instead receive one email at your chosen interval listing the relevant articles.

If no content has been published to the site matching your interest areas within the period selected, you will not receive an email.

The alerts emails you do receive will display the headline or title of each item, which is in itself a link to the article on the website – your email will not contain the full text of the original article. Just click the link and the article will open up in your internet browser.

The emails will have the subject line ‘IOM3 content alert’ and come from the sender ‘IOM3’. The actual sending address will be no-reply@iom3.org reflecting the automatic nature of the service. Please do not reply to these emails as we will not receive them.

Troubleshooting

Have you signed up for alerts but not received any emails at all? Here's a checklist:

• Is your email address up to date? Check this by going to ‘my profile’ then ‘edit’, and updating your email if necessary.
• Have your emails gone into your junk mail folder? Check in the ‘junk mail’ or ‘spam’ folder on your email service/client to see if the messages have been routed there by accident. If they have, you should then have the option to mark those emails as ‘safe’ or ‘not junk’ so that future alerts go direct to your inbox.
• Has our sending address been blocked by your company firewall? If your registered email address is your work email, you are advised to ask your IT department to ‘whitelist’ the address no-reply@iom3.org so that the messages can penetrate your corporate firewall.
• Have you ticked 'on updates' beside your preferred choices? Doing this will ensure that you receive the latest information from our site.

1. log in

2. go to 'my profile' then 'my alerts'

3. click into the categories, content types or threads pages

4. in those pages, untick whichever items you wish to stop receiving alerts for (or all of them, if you no longer wish to receive any alerts)

5. click 'save' at the bottom of the page

If you have any queries about content alerts, please don’t reply to the email alerts themselves as we don’t receive these – instead please contact us using the online enquiry form at www.iom3.org/contact, selecting the 'website' category.