Small Wars Journal

Site Help

We are small wars wonks, not web gurus.  We're doing out best, and sorry where that isn't great.  Hopefully it is good enough with these extra bits of information.

Two Separate User Accounts!

Our site can be viewed by just about anyone, but you need to be registered and logged in to do things like comment on Journal articles and post in the discussion board.  Registration is free and simple.

The site uses two separate user accounts, and many users' problems will be the result of cross-threading the two separate logins. 

  • The discussion board, Small Wars Council, runs on vBulletin.  See its FAQs.  Be sure you are logged in to your SWC account to get full access to the Council.
  • The rest of the site (including this page), runs on Drupal.  You need to log in to your SWJ Drupal account to be able to comment on the SWJ Blog, Journal articles, etc.

We want to simplify that, but aren't there yet.  The two software packages are highly regarded, but the user accounts from the two are not (yet?) integrated here.  Be sure you're logged in (to both?) with cookies enabled to save those logins and get the best user experience.

Parallel Accounts Are Authorized & Encouraged

At the time we stood up on Drupal, we pre-populated new Drupal accounts with the current info of all active Council users.  So to some it looks a little like you might have one account, but really you have two parallel accounts.  Those will get out of sync over time as you update one and not the other. 

Anyone who registered after D-Day will only have one account and will have to personally double tap their registration to be active on both portions of SWJ. We encourage new users to sign up concurrently in both sections of the site, preferably with the same username.  It is easier on you and the rest of us.

We do not permit users to have multiple Council accounts or multiple main site accounts.

Account Agnostic Issues

  • We welcome your reports of dead links, etc.  Please send specifics to us at webmaster@smallwarsjournal.com.
  • We know some network administrators, military networks in particular, block things. Sometimes videos, sometimes the discussion board writ large, sometimes the whole darn site.  We're interested in those limitations, but just about guarantee that is a network policy on your end not anything we can effect. Feel free to let us know about it, but we are helpless. The only way to address that is to mount an insurrection inside your organization to overthrow the e-tyranny.
  • If you don't already know that to view PDF Documents you need to download Adobe Reader, you should back away from the keyboard slowly so you don't hurt yourself. 
  • If you're having troubles with too-new versions of Office documents, look on the Microsoft website for a free download of the correct product viewer, e.g. this one for PowerPoint 2010.
  • If you are a highly proficient web designer or graphic artist with a penchant for Small Wars and a burning desire to donate your time and skills, we'd love to hear from you.
  • Another problem?