It has been a while since this has been explained but here is a breakdown of membership levels at SOH and why we have them.

User Group Tier Level Purpose
Users Awaiting Email Confirmation Built in Forum Account Spam and Bot control. You must activate your account through the activation email that was sent out to be automatically promoted to Member. Note that some email providers block our activation emails so you may need to use the contact us form to request activation.*
Member/Registered Built in Forum Account Can download files, Cannot Post, PM, leave visitor messages, or upload files. You must ask for posting permissions.
Member + Membership Level 1 Can download, upload, Post, PM and leave Visitor messages. All levels higher than level 1 have these privileges.
Charter Member Membership Level 2 Members who have donated are so named Charter Member. If you have not donated in the last 4 Donation drives you will be listed in this level. If you have donated in any one year you will always be listed as a minimum of Charter Member.
Charter Member 2022 Membership Level 3 Charter Member 2016 members who have donated in 2022. Names are displayed in Blue.
Charter Member 2023 Membership Level 3 Charter Member 2017 members who have donated in 2023. Names are displayed in Red.
Charter Member 2024 Membership Level 4 Charter Member 2018 members who have donated in 2024. Names are displayed in Red.

Member Allowances

We were clearly overly generous with our download rate (bytes/sec) in the past. We have scaled back to keep the server running at acceptable levels when unusually high numbers of members are downloading.

User Group Files Count Download Bytes Days Rate (bytes/sec) Upload Bytes Attachment Limits
Users Awaiting Email Confirmation Cannot upload or download files 0 MB
Member 50 1024M 1 56K None 0MB
Member+ 100 2048M 1 256K 5120M 40 MB
Charter Member 200 3072M 1 768K 10G 80 MB
Charter Member 2016 225 5120M 1 768K 10G 80 MB
Charter Member 2017 250 5120M 1 768K 10G 80 MB
Charter Member 2018 250 5120M 1 1024K 10G 80 MB
Charter Member 2019 250 5120M 1 1024K 10G 80 MB