Access To The Professional Forums Is Limited You must be employed in (or retired from) the floor covering industry to be able to participate in the PRO forums. Some of them you cannot even read and you will receive an error message if you try. Access is not automatic or instantaneous. This site doesn't use any software or hardware that can detect what your job is. One of only a couple of humans that are on staff here at TFP have to manually approve your inclusion in the pro user group so you can have access. Your wait shouldn't be too long, but there are a few things you must do first: Add some details about your industry status to your profile. Reply to the automated welcome message you received to let us know you want access. Be patient. If you are a pro and are worried about your privacy, then use a nick-name and don't put any personally identifiable information in your profile details. You don't need an address, phone number or anything special. It might take longer to approve you and a staff member may contact you via email to get more information, but it will always be kept confidential. Our pro forums are private for the same reasons your company meetings do not include the general public. We try very hard to maintain some professional courtesy and confidentiality in our pro forums so that you can discuss issues that are important to your success in the industry. If you are a consumer or do-it-yourselfer, you will not be given access to the pro forums. But you will not miss out on the best information and resources on the Internet regarding your flooring purchases or projects. We have done our best to make The Floor Pro Community a place other flooring professionals like to hang out, so there will be many of them willing to help you make the right choices and solve the biggest problems. All members, industry pro or not, have access to the forum search features, can upload pictures to messages, send personal messages to each other and can be part of the fastest growing flooring forum on the Net. If you are a pro member, you can access the private forums to share in the camaraderie and expertise with your peers. You also get more space allowance for personal messages, can use a text or banner ad in your signature area, be eligible to win some great prizes in our occasional contests and giveaways and have plenty of space for pictures in your posts and your own albums. Please let us know if you have any problems or questions. If you're not a member yet, join for free. Best R'gards, TFP Admin
"I'm a pro, but don't have access to a pro forum" I have Pro Access... except for here??? Occasionally, a pro will get a no-permission error message when they try to create a new topic in a pro forum. We have a couple of forums that only a staff member can start a new topic, or move an existing one into. Currently, these include the following: Spotlight on Flooring Professionalism Training & Industry News Anyone can reply to topics in those forums, but you can't start new topics in those forums. You can, however, create your new topic in another forum and then ask a staff member, via email or PM, to move your topic to a different forum. If the topic is appropriate, it will be moved. We encourage our PRO members to create new topics about their work and share pictures and important information about the project. While not all such post will end up "in the spotlight," many do. And this forum is not limited to the best of the best installations. It can also be a showcase for your retail showrooms, stories about great customer service and even how a particular product, educational event, industry organization or a manufacturing process has raised the bar on professionalism. The topic doesn't have to be about you either, it can be about a person or business you have first-hand knowledge of. One of our primary goals here is to be a resource for educational information and industry events. If you know of an upcoming seminar, class or convention, we want to know about it. That would be important "News" we would want to share with everyone. You can help us fulfill that goal by posting about it in a new topic or by sending the information to one of our staff members. Although we cannot re-post copyrighted content from another news source, we can find the original news release from the company or organization and post that. I hope this helps you understand why you may have gotten an error message when trying to post a new topic in these forums. If your question is still not answered, please contact me here. Thank you for being an important part of TFP.
I clicked "My OCCUPATION is flooring" Wasn't that enough? No, it isn't enough. You might have missed this part of the registration form: Tell us if you work in the flooring industry in some capacity. Access to the private, Pros Only forums is not automatic. The instructions in your welcome message explain how to get Pro Access. Check your Personal Conversations after registration. We don't give Pro Access to just anybody that clicks "My OCCUPATION is flooring." How do we know you are a pro? Our server and website software aren't that smart. You must provide us with a few details - in your profile - that will help our visitors know you are a PRO and help our administration believe you are a pro. Only a human staff member of TFP (an Admin or Asst. Admin) can give you Pro Access. It's not automatic and it's not instantaneous. What's so great about Pro Access? We hope you will see some value in having Pro Access here at TFP. There are a number of features here that only a PRO can take full advantage of: Free Ad in your signature area Link To Your Website in your member profile Free Business Support from your peers in private forums Training & Industry Events Information - promote yours and access to other's Deeper Search of our cache of professional discussions and information And much more Our PRO forums are private for the same reasons your company meetings do not include the general public. Our PRO features are exclusive because you have earned them through your participation as a flooring professional seeking to better yourself, your business and the flooring industry. We try very hard to maintain some professional courtesy and confidentiality at The Floor Pro Community, so that you can read about and discuss issues that are important to your success in the industry. But you can only get Pro Access if you follow the instructions in your welcome message.
