FAQ & HELP
Below are our responses to common questions posed by Cooking Contest Central members. If you have additional questions, please Contact Us.
CCC Site Access Issues
CCC has registered and utilizes several domain names (web addresses) and each of the following will lead you to our CCC web site.
https//dev.cookingcontestcentral.com
http://www.cookingcontestcentral.com
http://recipecontests.com
http://www.recipecontests.com
Entering our member areas containing the alert, contest listings, the forum and other pages requires that you be a paid member of our site. Thus, when requested via a pop-up security window please enter your subscriber’s email address on record in our membership files, for example – [email protected]. In the password area, please enter the password assigned to you when you signed up with our site or was last issued to you.
Please note that it is important that you double check your spelling and any punctuation marks when entering the information above. No punctuation marks are permitted in the password. However, in the email address you are permitted to use a “-“, “@” or “.” if needed.
There are many factors which influence your speed on the internet at any particular time and it is difficult to say what may be causing your particular problem. However, some of the common issues which affects perceived access speed to our site include:
- The speed of your connection to the internet (56k modem(slow), DSL(better), Cable(best))
- Our ISP providing web site support for CCC has server or network access related problems
- Overall internet traffic loads when your online (early morning & evening can be slower than at other times)
- Your own ISP has capacity constraints at the time you request information
- A virus or spyware related infection on your computer affecting overall PC performance
- Some pages of CCC, like the forum, are large files because of the volume of postings being delivered to your screen. Depending upon your connection speed, it may take longer at times to fully load. Also note that the contest archive files are the largest of any CCC file because they contain a year’s worth of expired contests and may take a long time to load, again depending upon your connection speed.
If you have a serious connection issue one of the few things you can easily try to do is go to another popular site like “Google”, “Yahoo” or some other known major domain name. If you find slowness accessing these other sites as well, the problem most likely resides either in your computer or your own internet access provider. Sometimes access providers like Comcast, AT&T, BellSouth, etc. may be experiencing heavy user loads at the very exact time you’re trying to access our site. One of the most simple solutions is to simply try again–in a few seconds and then in another minute or two. It is not unusual for these ISP’s to experience momentary slowdowns where you feel like your connection is dead. If the above retry doesn’t work, then reboot your computer as this is the second most simplistic solution and it may also solve your problem.
On the other hand, if you find speedy access to these other sites and rebooting doesn’t do the trick, then access to our site may be slowed by our own web server provider. Like your own personal ISP, access issues can be extremely temporary so try again. If access seems particularly bad for long periods of time, please contact us.
Password Issues
Please contact us if you need assistance in password creation.
Please be assured that we individually test each reissued username/password combination prior to e-mailing your personal sign-on information. 9 out of 10 password problems result from improper formatting of required username/password in the security window which appears when you wish to access a restricted area.
Always remember that your User Name is your complete email address!
You can try to re-enter both the user name and password in the appropriate sign-on security window which pops up when you try to access our restricted member areas. It is very important that you enter your information in a case sensitive manner. Incorrect use of capital letters are the major cause of sign-on failure. Also, failure to complete the @yourisp.com in your e-mail address after the username is the second most likely cause of failure to sign-on.
You can use the <tab> key to move from the username to the password field. Once both fields are entered, click the box which shows “remember my password” (if you want it to remember your sign-on information for later use) and then hit the <enter> key.
User Name: [email protected]
Password: xxxxx
Please note that it is important that you double check your spelling and any punctuation marks when entering the information above. No punctuation marks are permitted in the password. However, in the email address you are permitted to use a “-“, “@” or “.” if needed.
In the end, if you fail to gain access, please notify us immediately. We will be glad to e-mail a new password to replace the previous one. A new password can only be e-mailed to the registered member’s e-mail address on file in our records.
Forum Issues
CCC’s forum is intended to promote communication among members for the purposes of discussing cooking and recipe contests. Our goal is to foster friendship and harmony. CCC may eliminate a member’s post, if such a post uses inappropriate language, unnecessarily incites membership turmoil or promotes activities which undermines the operation and success of CCC as an organization. Such action to delete a post will be at CCC’s complete discretion without notice to anyone.
Sometimes members provide pictures in their post as well as web links. CCC does not systematically review the destination of these links unless warned by other members as to the unsuitability of a specific web link associated with a particular forum post. Individuals who click any link to a destination outside CCC’s web site should be particularly cautious as they should with any navigation out on the Internet. While the majority of such links point to contest information, blogs on the internet and food related url’s, there is always a possibility that links are for suspicious activity such as spam, virus infection or data collection. Data collection sites are always a threat as they are looking for e-mail addresses, personal name and other information which could threaten your privacy by you giving it out. Upon notification to us, CCC will review and potentially remove forum posts where it has been determined that a web link contained in the post is of an obvious suspicious nature.
Sponsor Online Entry Problems
Error messages or other failed attempts to enter a contest online can be attributable to a number of issues, but in general all potential problems can be lumped into three possibilities – a sponsor’s web site problem, internet communication error between your PC and the sponsor’s web site or a software related issue on your personal computer . The following explanations will try to show you what you can do to help yourself out of these problems. Please read all three sections even if you don’t think one does not pertain to you.
Sponsor Site Problems
It is not that unusual that a sponsor’s site may have a web page or server side computer problem which they may or may not be aware of. This is especially true if you are one of the earlier entrants to a contest. Even if your entry fails, always try again. If the server site was merely busy during your first attempt to send an entry or request information, a second try might do the trick. If a sponsor’s site gets overloaded with data requests it will not always tell you that the problem was that it was just too busy at the time to accept your information.
Check to see if other contestants are having the same problem as you. If everyone is having the same issue, the chances are it is a problem at the sponsor’s site and not your computer. If this is the case, a pleasant e-mail to the contest site contact usually brings it to their attention, but don’t expect a response during holiday’s or over a weekend.
Experience has also shown that entry submission can be affected by the time and day of the week you enter, although we can’t necessarily tell you when it’s best to enter. Sometimes (without telling visitors), web sites are “locked down for write data requests” after hours, during a holiday period or over a weekend to prevent hack attacks or a server may have some unresolved contestant database related issue. In both cases, because support staff are unavailable to resolve the problem, you are merely notified of failed entry form submission without a real clue as to why. For this type of situation, it is not unusual that sometime late morning on the next business day things are back to normal and form submissions occurs quickly and efficiently. In other words, the web staff returned to work and corrected the underlying problem.
Once you begin filling out the entry form — complete and submit your entry as soon as possible. If you wait too long, you will have exceeded the maximum connection time allowed by the sponsor’s server and you will have been disconnected from the Web site without your knowledge even though the sponsor’s web page is still visible in your browser. Once this disconnect occurs, your entry cannot be submitted or processed, if it exceeds this time limit and you will have to resubmit your recipe. (Note that each web site has its own time limit before an idle disconnect occurs and therefore CCC cannot tell you how long you have before you should submit an entry. That being said, it is our opinion that most sites would likely permit 15 to 60 minutes minimum for an entry to be completed.)
Internet Communication Error
Failure to submit an online entry form could be associated with communication errors between your PC and the sponsor’s web site. Failures of this sort are usually attributable to only a momentary breakdown in communication between the two devices, i.e., a garbled or incomplete message being sent or received. Usually, an attempt to resend the form, refresh the page or in other words – try again – will be simple enough to complete what you were originally attempting to do. Of course, this naturally assumes that you haven’t totally lost internet communication with the sponsor site. While there is no definitive timeframe to retry, we suggest you wait a few minutes before trying again.
User PC Problems
Contest entry submission where you think the problem lies in your computer are much harder to resolve, but here are a few tips:
Be absolutely certain that you haven’t blocked cookies. Most sponsor sites expect cookies to be used and accepted on your computer.
In order to prevent personal data loss, some security software may interfere with the transmission of personal form data, unless the blocking feature is disabled for this particular site or form submission. Review your computer for any child filtering or internet security software which might block form submission.
It is not unusual that after clicking the submit button on a form that the response from the sponsor’s site will be a new web page including a pop-up confirmation window to show your acceptance of the form submission. If your pop-up blocking software is enabled, this will prevent this confirmation window which must be shown, otherwise, your entry submission will not be complete. Before you click submit, temporarily disable pop-ups in your browser for the site in question. This will insure that, if used, any confirmation pop-up window will not be blocked which in turn will not complete the entry process. If you don’t know how to disable pop-ups, press the Control <ctl> and the Shift <shift> key simultaneously and while holding them down click the submit button on the form. This can be used to temporarily permit pop-up windows on certain sites.
Once you begin filling out the entry form — complete and submit your entry as soon as possible. If you wait too long, you will have exceeded the maximum connection time allowed by the sponsor’s server and you will have been disconnected from the Web site without your knowledge even though the sponsor’s web page is still visible in your browser. Once this disconnect occurs, your entry cannot be submitted or processed, if it exceeds this time limit and you will have to resubmit your recipe. (Note that each web site has its own time limit before an idle disconnect occurs and therefore CCC cannot tell you how long you have before you should submit an entry. That being said, it is our opinion that most sites would likely permit 15 to 60 minutes minimum for an entry to be completed.)
Try another computer. This is a fairly quick way to determine if it is your computer. More than 90% of people who know the sponsor site is working and try another computer find that they are able to complete the submission using another computer. We suggest if you’re trying to do this at home then use a work computer or visa versa.
Prepare For A Problem
When it comes to online recipe entry submission it is best to expect the worst and hope for the best. So that you don’t submit a form, lose the data and grow frazzled as a result here are some helpful tips:
Prepare your recipe in another program like Microsoft Word, Notepad or Wordpad and save this information to a file. In the event your form submission fails it will be easy to recopy and paste the recipe data into the form and try again.
While your form is visible in the browser, press the Control <ctl> and N <n> key simultaneously which will open up another duplicate window of the form you are about to submit. Thus, if the submission fails you’ll have a duplicate copy to immediately try again.
Before you click submit, temporarily disable pop-ups in your browser for the site in question. This will insure that, if used, any confirmation pop-up window required to complete your submission will not be blocked. If you don’t know how to disable pop-ups, press the Control <ctl> and the Shift <shift> key simultaneously and while holding them down click the submit button on the form. This can be used to temporarily permit pop-up windows on certain sites.
Making your picture smaller is easy. If you still want to do it, here’s how (I am assuming that you have microsoft office):
– Go to Start | Run
– Type in ois.exe (this starts a program called Microsoft Picture Manager, which is included in Microsoft Office)
– Find your picture and click on it
-Go to Picture | Resize
-Click the Predefined Width x Height button
-Choose one of the smaller choices.
If you need to know the file size, go to File | Properties. It will give you the size.
There are other and better ways to do this, but most people will have this program, so it’s a universal instruction.
Site Navigation Issues
Bad reference links should be reported to us as soon as possible. As a general rule, we make quick corrections of bad link references upon becoming aware of them. However, sponsor sites do change contest, form and rule pages without notice and our members can often catch things which we may not be aware of. Timely notification to us will insure that we can properly update our contest listings for other users to get to the proper destination.
Note that bad reference links more often show up in the archived contest pages as well as the winning recipes lists. As a general rule, CCC does not correct bad link references in the archived files since these are expired contests typically from a long time ago. However, we will investigate and correct bad references on the winning recipe pages, if the page is still available on the sponsor site.
About Our Listings
Yes! Periodically Cooking Contest Central will team up with companies to sponsor contests open exclusively to our members.
CCC obtains and posts information about upcoming contests from a variety of sources, but in all cases the summaries we post come from the sponsor website or press release at the time we become aware of a contest. CCC makes every effort to change our listings on a timely basis, if we become aware of changes by the sponsor subsequent to our original contest posting.
CCC makes every effort to provide the most accurate and up-to-date information possible, but ultimately the sponsor has the right to change deadlines, rules, prizes, etc.. All CCC members and contesters are advised to rely on the sponsor sites for the most up-to-date and officially correct information.
CCC cannot always verify the legitimacy of a contest being offered or sponsor although we try hard to weed out questionable contests and sources.
If a member or visitor to CCC detects a discrepancy in our contest descriptions, a rule change or a questionable contest or sponsor please let us know. We will investigate such issues, alert our members and update our listings in a timely manner to reflect the facts as best we can determine.
Customer Service Issues
CCC and the general internet community is aware that from time to time fraudulent E-Mails are sent trying to obtain Paypal information from internet users in general and our members in particular. As a security precaution, please read the following information obtained from the official Paypal Web Site. It contains steps to insure that you are not being “hoodwinked” unknowingly by scammers.
Please use the following tips to stay safe with PayPal:
Safe Log In: To log in to your PayPal account or access the PayPal website, open a new web browser (e.g., Internet Explorer or Netscape) and type in the following: https://www.paypal.com/
Greeting: Emails from PayPal will address you by your first and last name or the business name associated with your PayPal account. Fraudulent emails often include the salutation “Dear PayPal User” or “Dear PayPal Member”.
Email Attachments: PayPal emails will never ask you to download an attachment or a software program. Attachments contained in fraudulent emails often contain viruses that may harm your computer or compromise your PayPal account.
Request for Personal Information: If we require information from you, we will notify you in an email and request that you enter the information only after you have safely and securely logged in to your PayPal account.
Often, fraudulent emails will request details such as your full name, account password, credit card number, bank account, PIN number, Social Security Number, or mother’s maiden name.
Hopefully this information can help you evaluate whether the Paypal notice sent to you was legitimate or not.
More information can be found at: Paypal Security & Protection
Privacy Issues
Members as well as the general public should be mindful of their actions and the disclosure of personal information wherever they go on the internet, including this site. CCC is very sensitive to personal privacy and does not disclose anything on our site of a personal nature to anyone in the general public with the exception of member names & pictures submitted for inclusion in our scrapbook and hall of fame. In addition, we do not sell or share any personal member information including email addresses to anyone. Finally, no personal information is maintained on our web site servers except properly secured and encrypted email addresses and passwords which are a minimum requirement necessary to access the member areas on our site.
Here at CCC have had a long standing policy of accepting member submitted photographs and descriptions which were generally obtained while attending a corporate sponsored contest of some type in the public arena. These member submitted photos are available to be viewed by both the general public and members as well. We remind everyone, that these photos were taken in a public setting and you will oftentimes find similar pictures on the company web site who sponsors the contest. In most cases, photographs were posed and all participants were aware of the use of this shot on CCC’s web site. These photographs were submitted for entry into our scrapbook, usually by the person taking the picture or a family member.
There are occasions, however, when a submitted photo is found undesirable by the individual in the picture after posting to the site. It is the responsibility of the offended party to immediately notify CCC via email as to what picture they do not want posted.
All photographs submitted to our site become the property of CCC. Unless notice to remove a photo is given to CCC within a reasonable time after posting, it is assumed that photographic subjects agree to such postings and we will continue to do so indefinitely.