BECOMING A LAW OF SELF DEFENSE MEMBER:
A DETAILED GUIDE
STEP 1: Select your level of membership at http://www.lawofselfdefense.com/join (opens in new window)
STEP 2: After you click on your choice above you will be brought to the purchase page, which will look like this picture below. It is here that you provide your billing information, including your name, address, email, and credit card information.
You can ignore where it asks if you are a returning customer, unless you happen to recall an existing username and password for our site.
If you have a DISCOUNT COUPON code, however, you would click where it says “Click here to enter your code,” highlighted here in this image using the red rectangle:
STEP 3: After you provide your billing information and click the “Yes! Grant Me Access Now!” button at the bottom you will be directed to the confirmation page, which will look like the image below (we’ve blacked out some of the details in the image for security purposes).
You will also receive an email confirmation and receipt, so you don’t need to do anything in particular with this page. You might want to take advantage, however, of the option to get details about your account (the area highlighted above in the red triangle).
You will have been automatically assigned a complicated password and logged in as part of joining, but in the account area you can change your password to something easier to remember.
Either way, please MAKE A NOTE OF YOUR PASSWORD, as you will need it both to log into our site in the future AND to take advantage of our secure Podcast feed (Silver-level members and higher).
STEP 4: ACCOUNT PAGE: The image below shows what your account page will look like. Some of the tabs shown are largely irrelevant and may be removed in the future, but some are immediately useful.
STEP 5: MEMBERSHIP TAB: If you click the membership tab it will show you your current level of membership. NOTE that you will see both the membership that you actually paid for (Silver, Gold, Platinum) PLUS the FREE Bronze membership that provides extremely limited access to our content. Be assured that you were not charged extra for the Bronze membership, the free Bronze membership is simply included by default with every membership account.
STEP 6: PAYMENT METHODS TAB: If you click the payment membership tab you will have the option to add or alter a payment method. This should not be immediately necessary, but may become necessary to continue your membership access if, for example, your current credit card expires or you wish to change to a different credit card. (We never keep a copy of your credit card information, all that is handled securely by the credit card processor.)
STEP 7: ACCOUNT DETAILS: If you click the account details tab, this is where you can change your name, your email address, and/or your password. You will need your current password in order to change to a new password.
If you just joined, your current password is what was automatically generated upon joining and immediately emailed to you in a message with the subject line “Your Law of Self Defense account has been created!” That email will look something like this the image below. Your username will simply be the prefix of whatever email address you used to join (the part of your email before the “@” symbol).
I’ve highlighted the password in the red rectangle. The automatically generated password will be something quite complicated like this: lhDnC4Uqz#Ct You are encouraged to change your password to something easier to remember, which you can do on your account page as described above, but in any case please MAKE A NOTE OF YOUR PASSWORD, as you will need it both to log into our site in the future AND to take advantage of our secure Podcast feed (Silver-level members and higher).
STEP 8: SECURE PODCAST ACCESS
If you joined at any level of paying membership (Silver-member or above) you are eligible to access our podcast content, delivered most days of the week.
Shortly after joining you will receive an email with the subject line “Welcome to Law of Self Defense! Here is your RSS Podcast Feed” that will provide directions for accessing our secure podcast, but we’ve taken the opportunity to provide those directions here, as well.
In order to access the podcast content you will need two things:
(1) A podcast player capable of handling a username/password protected podcast (not all players can do this; iTunes, for example, cannot).
(2) Our secure podcast RSS feed URL AND your member username and password.
In terms of compatible podcast player, you are free to choose whatever you like that can handle a secure RSS, but in our experience some work much better than others. OUR STRONG RECOMMENDATIONS ARE BELOW:
For iPhones (iOS) we STRONGLY recommend the Downcast podcast player. It does incur a single one-time cost of $2.99 paid directly to Downcast, but it works very well in handling and delivering our podcast content. This is the player I use personally.
Here are detailed directions for adding the Law of Self Defense Podcast to the Downcast player:
You will need to search for and download Downcast using the App application on your iPhone, incurring that one-time $2.99 charge to Downcast.
Once downloaded, launch the Downcast app. At the bottom of the screen you will see several icons, with a “+” symbol in the middle. Click that “+” symbol.
After you click the “+” symbol you will see a choice at the top of the screen where you can “Add Podcast Manually”. Click that.
Next you will be shown a screen in which you are to input our RSS feed URL, as well as your LOSD membership username and password.
The Law of Self Defense Podcast RSS feed URL is:
lawofselfdefense.com/feed/premium
Your LOSD membership username and password are whatever was emailed to you in your confirmation, as described above, unless of course you made changes to either, in which case you must use whatever you chose.
For Android phones we recommend Podcast Addict or Doggcatcher podcast players. The process to add our podcast URL will be essentially similar to that described for Downcast, above.