Newbies is our special forum for members getting started at SecondWivesCafe.com. It's a great place to introduce yourself, ask questions, and get acquainted with other members.

This is our most popular new-member question! The abbreviations you're seeing in the posts are shorthand ways of saying very common words or names.

Here is a reference chart you can use:

Who's Who?	Extended Stepfamily Terms	Chat Terms
AD - Adopted daughter	BIL - Brother-in-law	AF - "Aunt Flo" (aka, menstrual period)
AS - Adopted son	CBC - Childless By Choice	AFK - Away from keyboard
BB - BioB**ch (on bad days)	CS - Child support	BFN - Big fat negative
BD - Bio-daughter	CSM - Custodial Stepmom	BPN - Big fat positive
BM - Birth Mother	EOW - Could be EOWK or EOWE; please avoid	BRB - Be right back
BS - Bio-son	EOWE - Every other weekend	BTDT - Been there, done that
COD - Child of Divorce	EOWK - Every other week	ETA - Edited To Add
DD - Dear daughter	FIL - Father-in-law	GMTA - Great minds think alike!
DH - Dear Husband	MIL - Mother-in-law	GTG - Get ToGether (site-oriented)
DS - Dear son	MMS - Malicious Mother Syndrome	HTH - Hope this helps
EXDH - Ex-husband	MOTY - Mother of the year	IMO - In my opinion
OSS - Older Step Son	NCP - Non-custodial parent	JK - Just kidding
SD - Stepdaughter	NCSM - Non-custodial stepmother	JMHO - Just my humble opinion
SF - Stepfather	PAS - Parental Alienation Syndrome	KWIM - Know what I mean?
SK, Skid - Stepkid	SAHM - Stay-at-home mom	LMAO - Laughing my a** off
SM - Stepmom	SIL - Sister-in-law	LOL - Laughing out loud
SO - Significant Other	SS - Spousal support (or StepSon)	OMG! - Oh my God!
SS - Stepson (or Spousal Support)	WOW - Wife of widower	PBFH - Psycho B**ch from H**l (usu. refers to BB/exwife)
STB... - Soon-to-be...(e.g., STBDH)	-	POAS - Pee on a stick (home pregnancy test)
SW - Second Wife	-	QOS - Queen of Stupid (usu. refers to BB/exwife)
XSD - Ex-StepDaughter	-	ROFLMAO - Rolling on the floor laughing my a** off
XSS - Ex-StepSon	-	ROFLMAOPIP - Rolling on the floor, laughing my a** off, peeing in my pants
YSS - Older Step Son	-	TGIF - Thank God it's Friday
-	-	TGIM - Thank God it's Monday
-	-	TMI - Too much information
-	-	TTC - Trying to conceive
-	-	WTF?! - What the f***?!

Click on the "smiley reference" button (to the right on the compose screen). There you'll see two rows of smilies, followed by text between two colons. Pick the smiley you'd like to place in a post and enter the text where you'd like it to appear in your message. Don't forget the colons on either side of the text!

Anyone with fewer than 50 posts on the SecondWivesCafe.com forums is a "member". "Cherubs" are members who have between 50 and 100 posts, and "angels" are members with more than 100 posts. The "guardian angels" are moderators.

Go to the member calendar to enter your date. A moderator will approve your entry and you should see it on the member calendar soon.

We wouldn't be here if we couldn't relate to that feeling! There are many "seasoned" second wives and stepmothers here at SecondWivesCafe.com who can lend a listening ear... or a shoulder to cry on. Post in our Newbies forum and you'll find a buddy to help.

You can personalize your posts and add your special touch by providing a signature to end your forum posts. Some SecondWivesCafe.com members use a special quotation as their signature, some put their email address, and others insert their homepage URL. To personalize your signature, go to your member profile and enter what you'd like at the end of your posts in the Signature Text Box.

While we fully support our members' rights to free speech, it's important to remember that other members will judge and remember each other based on the kind of language and content of posts. Virginia Shea's site on "Netiquette" has some very helpful hints and is worth a look: http://www.albion.com/netiquette/book/. Try and remember these few guidelines:

• If you wouldn't say something to another member in person, don't post it on a forum.
• We will remove ad hominem attacks in posts. Personal attacks on other members are strictly prohibited. SecondWivesCafe.com is a support site, first and foremost. Many members have very serious problems and issues; we won't permit members to attack each other.
• If you become frustrated with the community as a whole, please bring it up with a moderator or a member of the admin team, rather than posting about your feelings at the Members Cafe.
• We usually do remove "I am leaving the community" posts (with a few exceptions). These are often intended to gain attention and serve to either criticize the site or to upset the community.
• We also remove posts for fundraisers, even if the cause seems like a good one. This includes soliciting our members for a donation to help another member or former member.
• Give other members the benefit of the doubt; it can be hard to translate a tone of voice or body language in a text environment. If you feel insulted by something another member has written, ask for clarification before assuming the worst
• Don't fan the flames of flame wars---if a thread is getting out of hand and becomes characterized by anger and hurt feelings (and goes on and on...) don't keep it going by responding to the flamers! It could jeopardize the community feeling we've cultivated.
• If you believe another member is using her membership to "spy" on you or cause you or the community problems on another site, please mail us at admin @ secondwivescafe.com to let us know about it. Please do not post about these concerns on the open forums, since they usually just upset other members unnecessarily.
• Make sure you familiarize yourself with the Terms of Service!
• If you disagree with a post, focus on challenging the other member's concepts, rather than the member.
• Be courteous and keep your post subject in line with your post. The practice of "selling a thread" by intentionally choosing a subject with false or misleading information or fake "news headlines" simply to garner attention or member responses within the thread will not be allowed. If the thread is intended to be satirical, please place that within the thread, and not the thread title.
• Play nice and have fun!

Head over to your member profile and look for the photo album section. Click on the "Set mine up" button. Then, click the "add photos" link at the top of the page, and add in your photos from your hard drive.

You may have up to five pictures in the photo album... don't be shy!

Just send an email to majordomo@secondwivescafe.com with "unsubscribe members" in the message body, and it will be taken care of automatically.

Chat hosts: We always need good conversationalists to host chats! Contact LeChica at LeChica @ secondwivescafe.com to volunteer!

Articles: Are you an aspiring writer? Have something to say about your life as a second wife or stepmother? Write for us! Contact Mary at mary @ secondwivescafe.com to talk about article submissions.

Moderate: Have you "been around" the site for a while? Want to do a little more for your fellow SecondWivesCafe.com sisters? Consider becoming a moderator! Email us at admin @ secondwivescafe.com; we'd love to talk to you about it.

Financial: Long gone are the days of internet banner advertising raking in the big bucks for site owners. It's an "affiliate market" now. This means we don't get paid just for showing an ad, our members have to actually buy something to help the site!

If you love to read, visit Amazon.com (from a SecondWivesCafe.com ad link, of course). Need new undies? Click on one of our lingerie sponsors' ads. Sending flowers to your mom for her birthday? I bet you will see a flower ad you can order from. Just check the Sponsor Directory!

Our site is mostly run by volunteers. The site founders draw a small salary from the Cafe, and we reimburse expenses to those who assist us in verifying members. While we are looking into incorporating as a nonprofit entity, right now we have paid---out of our own pockets---for the site server, for software, for name registration, and for trademark applications. We love SecondWivesCafe.com and would continue supporting it ourselves, but honestly, we'd prefer it to pay for itself!

You can donate to the SecondWivesCafe.com Angel Fund through PayPal — just look for the PayPal button on the bottom of this page.

If a post is particularly offensive, please bring it to our attention. Email us at admin @ secondwivescafe.com; cut-and-paste the offending post in the body of the email. We will let you know what we decide about your request. As we state in the Terms of Service, posts will be deleted if they are illegal or obscene.

Our policy is to err on the side of free speech rights, so some "offensive" posts may remain. Please try to be tolerant of other members' opinions, even if they may be badly stated.

Don't panic! Your privacy is important to us! Your non-public information is only visible to you and the site administrators.

It's a special, opt-in forum where members can discuss sexuality and their relationships. We've made this one optional for members as some of us have curious (i.e., nosy) children around who prefer not read posts about sex. Other members just find these kinds of discussions offensive.

You'll have to "earn" the privilege to opt-in, though — in order to protect our members, only active members can opt-in to the Birds & Bees forum.

This forum is semi-anonymous; only the site's admin team and the Birds & Bees moderators will be able to see the identity of posters in that forum.

Like the Birds & Bees forum, the Abuse forum is semi-anonymous. Only Abuse moderators and the site's admin team will be able to see who's posted there.

We've made this forum anonymous to make posting about what is, for many women, an embarrassing and uncomfortable subject, more comfortable and "safer".

For non-critical problems, post a message in our Procedures forum.

If you can't post a message for whatever reason, email tech support at rk @ secondwivescafe.com. We've developed our whole system from scratch, so there may still be a few as-yet-undiscovered glitches around. If you find any, tell us right away and we will get rid of them!

Cafemail is our newest "donation goodie"! Not just any old email system... this one will work the way that's best for you. Want to read your mail on our site? No problem! Prefer to get it forwarded to your computer's inbox? We can do that!

To get your Cafemail delivered, fresh and hot, right to your inbox:

1. 1. Make sure you have at least $1 in your goodies balance (there's a link at the bottom of this page to donate to the Angel Fund).
2. 2. Go to your profile and check "Cafe POP3 Mailbox"
3. 3. When the profile is finished updating, it will display "Click here to set up your mailbox"
4. 4. Click there and the mailbox will be set up


5. You then have to activate Microsoft Outlook with these settings:
1. Incoming mail server: secondwivescafe.com
2. Outgoing mail server: secondwivescafe.com
3. User name: yourcafename@secondwivescafe.com
4. Password: same as your cafe password
   

To read your mail at the Cafe:

1. Go to this link: http://secondwivescafe.com/webmail/

2. username: yourcafename@secondwivescafe.com
3. password: same as your cafe password

This system is pretty new... if there are any glitches, please pester... er, notify Ron the Tech Support Guy at rk @ secondwivescafe.com!

If you've donated to the Angel Fund, we track the funds you've donated to the site in your "goodies balance." You can check your balance by going to your member profile.

Look on the left side of the page; there's a link that reads, "Accounting for (your username)." Click that link, and it will show your donation balance.

If you like a thread on our forums, give it a halo! Granting a thread a "halo" tags it as an especially good, interesting, or significant thread. We use "halo-ed" threads to make recommendations on our site's home page, as well as in the daily member newsletter.

Soon we will add a special halo graphic to "halo'ed threads" so you'll be able to see which threads have gotten halos by other members.

We've added avatars — those cool little graphics to the left side of threads — as a special "thank you" for our donating members. Here's how you can select an avatar if you've donated to the Angel Fund... first, go to your member profile (just click on your name to get there). Towards the top of the page, you'll see a link for avatars. Click that, and then select the one you'd like. This option will only appear if you've donated $12 or more in the past year. Once you've selected the one you'd like, click the button at the bottom of the page to update your profile.

You can donate to the Angel Fund by signing in to the cafe page and clicking the link on the left.

For bold, type <b> before the text you wish to make bold, then type </b> after the text.

For italics, use <i> and </i>.

When you're composing a post, you'll see a "Smiley Reference" at the top right. Click on that and type the word, starting and ending in : for the smiley you want. Example: :big: is .

To put them in your signature, note the smiley you want first, (you can't access the smiley reference from your profile) go into your profile by clicking on your name, find the signature box and enter them there.

Click on any member's profile (except your own) and in your address bar, change my name to their member name. That'll take you to their profile and you'll be able to then PMS them.

If you don't have an album, go into your profile and you'll find a place to create one. If you have one, go into your album. Click on "Add Photos". Then "Browse" and find where you saved your photo(s). Once you've gotten the ones you want, submit.

A buddy is a member you like. Buddies appear on the left side of the Cafe main page with a hug symbol, and you can ask for threads started by your buddy (buddy threads) to appear on the Cafe page also. You can change how many buddy threads appear by going to your profile.

Go into THEIR profile and select "Make my buddy" on the left. You can have up to 11. If you wish to remove someone, again, go into THEIR profile and remove.