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Some members have been reporting the need to log in to our website every time -- while in the past their username and password have been "entered for them". Quite often the problem has been traced to:
the member not having the date set correctly on their computer! Make sure that the date on your computer is set properly, otherwise your cookies may not be recognized by our system.

Yes. Cookies are very tiny text files that are stored on your computer when you visit certain web pages that record your preferences. We use cookie technology to keep track of your preferences and settings on our website only, so our system can remember you when you return to our website. Our cookie is also used so you don't have to enter your username and password on every single page to access features such as real time Wind, Forecasts, Windcams, and the Discussion Forum. Our cookies cannot harm your computer and they do not contain any personal or private information. It is possible to browse our site in a very limited manner even with cookies turned off. However, we recommend setting your browser to permit the use of cookies.

Turning cookies on and off in your browser tends to be different for the variety of browsers out there. click here to search for solutions.

There are multiple ways to log in.

- The top right corner of the the page will have a "sign in" button to log in.

- Clicking Favorites or Alerts tabs will prompt you to log in.

- From the search page, clicking on a weather station that requires membership will prompt you to log in.

A profile is simply a list of your favorite spots. If you add any spots to your favorites you already have a profile!

To save your current favorites into a named profile click on the button on the left side of the action bar called "favorites". Inside the drop down click on the icon to open a text box where you can name your profile. Be creative! Click Save to always be able to return to these favorites.

You can create as many profiles as you want. Clicking on the My Profiles button will open the drop down to allow you to switch profiles, delete a profile, and share your profile with a friend!

With so many sites in our database it is easy to get overwhelmed. That's why we added search parameters such as rank and sensor type to help filter the good stuff from the just ok stuff. Once you find the "good" stations you will want to build a list of these "favorites".

To add a spot to you favorites list to begin building your profile:

- Click on the spot on the map and hit the Star icon. This prompts you to add the spot real time data OR the spot forecast.

- You can add the spot to any profile that you have created.

Once you have your profile created you can manage it by clicking on the "favorites" tab on the top. This page will allow you to copy profiles, delete profiles, and add and subtract locations.

A Wind Alert is a way to alert you when wind conditions meet your specified thresholds. There are three types of devices that can receive Wind Alerts: email, mobile and desktop.

FREE members are limited for alerts/month.

Plus memberships and greater can receive unlimited numbers of alerts.

To add an alert simply click on the alert button that appears on the site info page or the search page site data box. You will then be prompted for which profile this alert will be good for (if you only have one profile then you won't be prompted to choose). Once you have spots added to your profile you can then click on the Alerts tab at the top of the page. From this page you can see all the sites that you have added alerts for and adjust the parameters of the alert (frequency, alert hours, gust and lulls, enabled, disabled, application, method of alert, etc.)

Click on the "View my account" link within the top right hand button on the button bar. This will open a page where you can configure your account settings.

To view your statement: Click Here

Click on the "View my account" link within the top left hand button on the button bar. This will open a page where you can configure your account settings.

To change your billing information: Click Here.

Click on the "View my account" link within the top left hand button on the button bar. This will open a page where you can configure your account settings.

To change your email address: Click Here.

Click on the "View my account" link within the top right hand button on the button bar. This will open a page where you can configure your account settings.

To change password. Click here.

You can add favorites by clicking on the Star button from any location.

Here is a video showing exactly how to do this.

Profiles are groups of weather stations, virtual stations, and specific spot info containers (saved maps, tide graphs, model forecasts, etc.) that a specific user created to suit their wind information needs. The concept of a "relevant profile" for WindAlert is that someone else might know where the best weather stations or forecast spots are in a given area and by tapping into their saved preferences, you might be able to make better decisions knowing that those stations may be of higher quality. Once you have navigated to someone else's profile you can easily save that profile to your own or copy it to edit it as your own.

Relevant profile criteria:

Each profile has a specific geographic coverage based on the spread of the spots that the profile creator selected. We use this geographic spread to match as closely as possible to the area that you are looking at in the map view as one criteria for which profiles to show. However, this is not the only thing we look at as Profile Rank can override all. Profile Rank is determined by several factors including the number of times a profile has been favorited by someone else, the number of stations in a profile, the creator's membership level, and more. Even the fact that a profile's name was changed to something other than "favorites" weighs in on the ranking. If you haven't selected a primary activity then you may want to do so as primary activity also weighs heavily into the profile ranking. Want your profiles to rank higher? Share them with all your friends!

There are two special cases for profile rankings:

WindAlert.com Homepage:

The relevant profiles presented in this list is different than the rest of the website because it uses IP location to make a best "guess" for you. Generally this will get you to the State/small country level of accuracy and try to get you quickly to quality content.

WindAlert.com Site Info page:

The relevant profiles presented on these pages are generated by the most popular profiles that include the spot (weather station or virtual station) that you are looking at regardless of zoom level.

Virtual Stations are something unique to WindAlert.    They are basically an estimate of winds both real time and forecasted at a spot where an actual weather station doesn't exist.    And... they are free to set up and use!

- Predefined stations-

Over the years, users have requested data for spots that we didn't have a station so we just started populating our virtual database with lat/lon of spots around the world.   Then, when we created our new weather engine, we decided to populate with spots just offshore from all the continents as often the computers do a little better for over water stations than in close to shore. These predefined stations are available to anyone if you turn on the map layer called "virtual stations".

- Custom virtual stations- We quickly learned that we can't be everywhere and address everyone's needs for spots that they care about.     Therefore we have given you the power!   You can create your own set or sets of virtual stations.

1. Perform a search for the area you are interested in.  (type into the search box, or just pan or zoom the map)
2. Left mouse click on the map anywhere that you don't already see an existing weather station or virtual station.
3. Favorite your new virtual station to add it to your favorites list.
4. Rename the spot to whatever you want!
5. Select which profile you want to add the spot into.
6. Now click into your profile and Tada!... your new virtual station is ready for you!    From here you can set forecast alerts, see different forecast models. or even add data from this spot to your website with our widgets!

We have worked hard to make widgets easily configurable.

1) Get to the widget page by first clicking the details button from any location or virtual location.

Then Click the Widget Button from the location details page:

2) Customize the color for your new widget!   Click the color box and then select what color you want to use.    You can also enter a Hex value to match your website.   Click the apply button when your done.   The same color will be used on all widgets on the page.

3) Select Units.    Click Apply when done and the units will be set on all widgets on this page.

4) Since it's YOUR widget, you can name it anything you want!   Simply type in a name and press apply.

5) As with all widgets, to add your new widget to your web page, simply copy the code below each widget and paste it into your page:

The Forecast table widget is one of our most popular widgets.   It shows predicted windspeed, direction, wind gust, sky conditions, temperature, wave heights, wave direction, and wave period.

You can configure the widget by setting it's width and height in the options panel.

You can set the numbers of days on the forecast. Here is a smaller widget for just a 2 day outlook:

The map widget is quickly becoming one of our favorite widgets. What could be better than showing all the current weather data for your area on a single map?!

The setup has the usual settings for you to use such as widget dimensions but you can also change the background map default as well as customize the name of this widget (this won't override the global name change on the other widgets on the widget page). Probably the most important button when you are configuring is the APPLY button. Use this button everytime you make a change to update the sampled widget on the screen.

The widget has 2 modes that you can use to set it up. Profile mode and Search mode.

Profile Mode: using the drop down called 'Profile Spots', simply select whatever profile is in your account to drive the widget. This forces the widget to only show the spots in the profile selected and the map zooms to the extents of those sites to fit them all in. If you want to zoom in or out while still using the profile sites, simply do so using the sample widget then hit the APPLY button to save that zoom or pan.

Search Mode: This mode simply performs a new search everytime the widget is used on your site. This is a good way to keep all stations that we have in our database on your widget because if we add more, they will automagically show up (if they fit). Note that you can zoom in and out as well as pan the map and the boxes called 'center' and 'zoom' will change to reflect the new settings. Hit the APPLY button when you have the map looking how you want it.

As always, to add the widget to your site, simply cut and paste the code below the sample widget into your web page.

How many times have you heard, "this year has been no wind!"?    Well by using our wind statistics widget you can answer everyone's stats questions to easily compare wind data per month to see when it is normally windy during the year!

This widget it fairly user friendly so we don't have any configuration options (yet).

We do get questions about the specifics of the data so we put a help button right on the widget that you see below:

As always, simply cut and paste the code below the sample widget to add this hugely popular widget to your website!

Get it on your pages...... the Real- Time graph!

By adjusting the size parameters you can make the graph and data fit any web page:

A few answers to commonly asked questions on these graphs:

- The arrows point in the direction of wind flow.  Think of them as the head of a vector showing the direction a particle in the air flow would be traveling.

- The yellow arrows are reported wind direction, the gray arrows are the predicted wind directions from WeatherFlow's quicklook model.

- The dashed gray line is the predicted wind speed.

- red line= gusts, blue line=average, green line=lull.

- Viewers of your widget will see the real time data for all weather stations in our database.   However, if a station requires premium membership on WindAlert.com, then the viewer will need to be logged in as a premium member to view the data on your website's widget.

As with all widgets, simply paste the code below the sample widget to place the widget on your web page, blog, etc.

The model forecast widget is a great way to quickly see what day over the next 1-7 might have wind.

You can configure the widget to fit into any size web page by adjusting the size and hitting apply.

As in all widgets, simply paste the code below the sample widget to get the widget into your web page, blog, etc.

"you shoulda been there!"   Now you can add the ultimate "check this out" for your blog or web page with yesterday's widget.

You can adjust the size of your widget by the width and height boxes and hitting apply.

As with all widgets, simply paste the code below the sample widget into your web page, blog, etc.

Is there a way to set up an email or wind alert for winds that are FORECAST to be above or below a certain threshold?

Yes!!!  These are called forecast alerts. Forecast alerts are wind alerts that are send to your email or mobile device for winds that are FORECAST to arrive in the near future.  You can set them up to for when winds are above or below your prescribed threshold.

To set these up for a weather station follow these directions:

Go to www.windAlert.com and log on.  Search for the location of interest and click on that site.  A site box pops up.  Click on the Details button (a right arrow).  Then click on the Alert sub-tab.  The alert configuration page loads.  For forecast alerts, pay special attention to the lower section of this page.  Make sure the Model Forecast Alert Settings are Active.  Lastly, click the Save button on the upper right corner of this section.