Please complete the joining form.

Essential questions will be marked with a *. Other questions are for information only but helpful to the OPA.

Life Membership of the OPA costs £10. If you are already a Life Member you may enter a coupon code (previously provided) to obviate this charge at the end of the form.

You will be asked to set and confirm a password.

A strong password contains upper and lower case letters, numbers and some special characters. Short phrases (as long as they are not in common use can often work well with the addition of numbers and special characters).

PLEASE take special care to select a strong or "stronger" password. <"Unbreakable" is the best indication (although not a guarantee).

If you are already a Life Member of the OPA you may enter a coupon code by clicking the prompt "Have a coupon?"

Enter your coupon code in the box.

Accept the terms and conditions according to our privacy policy. We do not use members' data for any commercial purpose whatsoever.

Please refer to our Privacy Policy for more details.

At the top right corner of the website is the login/logout link

Enter your username and password in the login window.

Click on the magnifying glass (search) icon to search the site:

The first few results will show in the drop down box.

The site is divided into various sections displaying different content. The first page has a Welcome section followed by Announcements, Latest News and a School Section.

At the top of the first page is an "Announcements ticker" showing links to the latest OPA announcements.

The site is comprised mainly of articles much like a newspaper. The latest articles will always show at the top of the Latest News Section on the front page or at the top of the News Page accessible from the menu.

Articles are assigned categories. A single article may be assigned multiple categories.

Clicking the category box above the title of the article will take you to a page displaying all articles in the category in date order.

Clicking the title of the article or the photo will take you to the article page where you may read, comment on or share it further.

Below each article are share buttons and comments

Click the appropriate share button to share the article on social media or by email or to print a copy.

Users who are logged-in may leave (polite and relevant) comments below the article or reply to comments already made.

Once logged-in you will see extra menu items:

Account
Profile
Forums

The Account page shows the details provided on the Life Membership Application form and may be updated as necessary. The OPA does not share this information with any third parties or on the website.

For security reasons the Social Profile members present to other users on the OPA website is kept separate from and is far less detailed than that which was provided when joining the OPA.

The Social Profile may be edited from the Profile Menu option.

Clicking on any item on the Profile submenu takes you to the Profile Management Page..

Here you may manage details of your profile or view notifications.

The top menu shows the profile/notification items. The bottom menu shows available options for each top menu item.

In this case the Profile tab is selected on the top menu. The second menu reflects available options and the user is about to select the edit function.

Selecting the edit function allows editing of profile details.

Most profile elements are optional.

For obvious reasons the NAME field is required. Please leave it to something meaningful. Name and school years would be the most helpful.

The visibility of individual profile elements is shown below the edit window.

Individual profile elements may be changed to be visible as wished.

Select "change" to change visibility.

Close the change visibility options presented. The change in visibility will be reflected in the summary.

Once editing is complete click the "Save Changes" button at the bottom of the page.

You will see visibility changes reflected below the field.

Select between uploading a photo from your computer and taking one using your web camera.

The photo may be dropped or selected from a folder on your computer.

Adjust the dimensions of the photo by dragging the crop box from the corners or from the middle.

Click and drag the now correctly sized frame to position the image according to your preference.

Select "crop" to crop and upload the new image.

Successful uploading of your profile photo will be confirmed.

Notifications may be checked from this menu including new messages and replies to forum posts.

Discussion forums may be accessed by selecting "Forums" from the main menu

When entering the forums you will be presented with a list of open forums.

Each forum will contain a number of topics. Users may also make their own new topics if they wish.

Each topic will contain conversation in the form of posts and replies to posts.

Select a forum to view topics within.

Select a topic to view conversation in the form of posts and replies to posts.

The editor allows for replies or posts to be formatted. Each option selected shows with a box and the icon highlighted blue.

In the example;
the words "It's a" are bold
the words "nice" onwards are bold and italic
and the words "cup of tea" onward are bold, italic and underlined.

Images may be added to posts or replies. Select the "Choose file" button under "Attachments:" to add an image to a post or reply.

Select the image to add it to the post or reply.

Once the reply or post has been completed and an image or images selected press the submit button to submit the post or reply.

The image will show as a large thumbnail below the post or reply. Click on the image to see it full size.

Users may subscribe to topics to be kept informed of new replies or activity.

Click on photos to see the photos submenu.

Photos are arranged by school.

Each page has school, class, team and other photos arranged in galleries.

Photo page showing two galleries. The end of the Secondary School "School" gallery and the start of the Secondary School "Class" gallery.

The "Team" and "Other" galleries will be found below the "Class" gallery thumbnails.

Click on a photo to open the Preview Gallery

The selected photo will open in a "lightbox". The lightbox shows a preview of the gallery photo and allows scrolling through the rest of the gallery.

Click the arrows on the left and right to navigate through photos in the gallery.

The lightbox is designed to enable a quick look through the gallery to identify photos of interest.

Some of the images are very large.

At the bottom of the image in the lightbox is a toolbar containing a "Quick Magnify" function.

Clicking the magnifying glass will magnify the portion of the image around the cursor.

When the Quick Magnify function is selected the portion of the image in the immediate vicinity of the cursor will be magnified.

The Quick Magnify function shows small portions arts of very large images at their normal resolution.

In this case it shows Mr Francis-Smith, the first headmaster of the school.

The magnifying glass may be moved around the image to magnify different parts.

Quick Magnify is a useful function for quickly zooming in on an image.

For a more detailed examination of very large images it is best to view the original image at full resolution - see 6h)

Select the "Link to Original Photo" to view the image at full resolution and to see any accompanying information.

Smaller images which are adequately displayed in the lightbox may not have this option.

Click the image to enlarge it to full size.

Click the image again to reduce it. You may need to navigate to the top of the page again.

Clicking on the original image will display it at full-size.

Users may navigate within the image by scrolling.

Click on the image to reduce the size back to fit on the page.