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Google Accounts & Intranet Access

This page is to help incoming SWJ volunteers, regular bloggers, and miscellaneous back office helpers gain access to some of our back office stuff. Our first step is to get you into our intranet; after that, we'll use the information there to get you dialed in further.

Access to our back office is through a Google Account or a Google Apps Account. Those offer vaious Google Services. Mail is one of those services. Google Sites is another, which we use for our intranet. We use some other Google products here and there. Access to all of them is based on your Google Account.

So we are NOT talking here about your SWJ Username and/or Council Username that you use to sign in to your SWJ accounts on our server. We'll get back to that a little later.

Quick Start

  • Either Create a Google Account, or confirm that you already have one that you'd like to use. Don't know if you have one? Read this.
  • Email your Google Account username to [email protected]
  • Wait for our reply telling you we have added the right access permissions to your account.
  • Log in to the intranet using your Google Account. Most users need to use the less-prominent "Sign in with a different account" link shown below.

The intranet URL is http://intranet.smallwarsjournal.com

More Info   (Too Much Info?)

If the Quick Start above is easier said than done, then either read through these sections in order or skip to the directions for your situation:

I don't know what a Google Account is.

  • If you use use GMail, then you already have a Google Account. Your GMail address is your username.
  • But a Google Account is NOT the same as GMail.

    • GMail is one of many products that you can use with your Google Account.
    • We only need you to have a Google Account. We don't care if you use or don't use GMail (though we like it, ourselves).
  • If you don't want to use GMail, then create a Google Account that is linked to a 3rd party email account you already have, e.g. Hotmail, yahoo, usmc.mil, whatever.

    • See this tip.
    • Your Google Account username is that full 3rd party email address, i.e. with the @domain.com included.
  • Some organizations use Google Apps to do their email. Your @somthing.com organizational email might already be a special type of Google Account called a Google Apps Account.

    • We can’t tell you if it is. Ask your system administrator, or just try to use it to create a Google Account. If it is, Google’s registration process will warn you "There's already a Google Account associated with this email address."
    • If it is a Google Apps account, you may use that as is for access to our systems. Just let us know you have an existing Google Apps account that you want to use with us.
    • Even though you can, you may not want to do that. Your system administrator owns that account, not you. For some, no problemo. For others, separation of church and state suggests you should set up your own private account using another email. Your call.
    • We only have a few folks with @smallwarsjournal.com email addresses. Those are Google Apps accounts and already have access to the intranet.

Again, none of this is the same as your SWJ or Council usernames. We'll get back to that later, once you're into the intranet.

I have a Google Account that I'd like to use with SWJ.

Send the username for the Google Account that you would like to use with us to [email protected].We need to add some permissions to your account before you can access the site. We'll notify you in a return email when that's complete and you can login to the intranet.

I'm having trouble logging in.

Please be sure that:

  • You're using your Google Account to login to the intranet, not the SWJ Username or Council Username that you use for our production site.
  • You're using the "sign in with a different account" link on the intranet login screen, not the @smallwarsjournal.com username box.
  • We've confirmed we added that Google Account to our permissions list.

Still having problems? Take a look at this document to see what your clickthrough should look like, and tell us where you're bombing out. If you're doing all that right, then we must have gooned up a permission when we added your account. Contact [email protected].

Tips for established users.

If you are a user of multiple Google Accounts, you may want to look at these: