Medical News Today Help Page

Registering for an MNT account allows you to adapt the way you read MNT news articles both online and offline.

When you sign up, you are able to select only stories from specific news categories to be visible by default on our home page, as well as create your own customized weekly or daily newsletters.

In addition, you receive real-time notifications of activity on MNT opinion threads you have created, or commented on in the past.

You can read more about all these features and more in the following sections, or sign up for an MNT account.

At MNT we are fully committed to providing you with a secure service and implement SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption to ensure sensitive data such as your user name (email address) and password) are hidden from potential online attackers.

We take every precaution to ensure that MNT remains up-to-date with all the latest online security developments and you may query your web browser's help text to understand how you can check MNT's security when you are logged in.

We've also taken steps to assure you that data you are entering will be sent in a secure manner. You can see and learn more about this assurance whenever you see the green padlock sign in a login form on MNT - see the image below.

After you've signed up and signed in to your MNT account, select "Customize homepage". On this page you can decide which news categories you would like to feature on your MNT homepage as well as how you would like them to appear.

Simply set the categories you would like to see on your customized homepage by dragging and dropping them from the left-hand list below, to the right-hand list.

If you would like to change the order in which your selected categories appear, just click and drag each category item up or down to match the order you want them displayed on your customized homepage.

You may also access these categories from any page on MNT from the "Your categories" dropdown in the menu - just make sure that you are logged in first.

You also have the option to edit how your custom categories are displayed. We currently have three layout options available:

Option 1: Customized categories (separated)

This option is similar to our very popular newsletter layout.

Option 2: Customized categories (combined)

Option 3: All news (original)
The all news (original) option simply displays the normal, original homepage, listing headlines from all categories. So if you want to have your favorite category links displayed in your left navigation bar, whilst keeping the same homepage that you are used to, this is the option to choose.

When logged in to your MNT account, you are able to create and reply to opinion threads linked to our articles without having to re-enter your name and email address.

If you have an existing MNT account but are not logged in, we'll prompt you to do so when you enter your email address. At this point, it's your choice to log in and proceed to submit your opinion, or continue without logging in.

It's important to note that if you have an MNT account but choose not to log in when you submit your opinion, you won't receive notifications when other MNT account holders reply to the same thread (see below for further information).

We provide MNT account holders with real-time notifications of activity on opinion threads they have either created, or replied to.

You may access your most recent opinion notifications for the past 10 days by clicking on the bell icon when you are logged in to your MNT account.

Clicking on an individual notification will take you to the opinion thread for that page. Clicking on the "Show all" link will take you to your main opinions page, where you will see a complete list of your opinion notifications.

You may also choose to turn notifications for individual threads on or off from this page.

Please be aware that in order to receive notifications, you need to make sure that you have an activated MNT account and that you are logged into the account when creating a new opinion thread, or posting to an existing one.

We provide free daily and weekly newsletter subscription services for any or all of our 132 medical and health news categories.

If you are an existing MNT account holder, simply sign in to your account and select the "Newsletter settings" option from the dropdown menu that appears under your name in the blue menu bar on the website.

From here, you can alter your newsletter subscription settings, which include your selected news categories as well as the frequency and format of your newsletters.

If you are not yet an MNT account holder, click here to register a free account.

When you log in to Medical News Today we will keep you logged in until you decide to log out. When you log in, you will see a checkbox with the label 'This is a public computer'. If you are not using your own computer to access MNT, you can tick this box to tell us not to store a cookie with your login information on that device. Please note that you will need to manually log out of MNT when you finish using that computer/device.

A cookie is a piece of text stored by your web browser in a special place on your computer. It cannot be read by any website other than Medical News Today, and does not contain any personal information or spyware.

For more detailed information about cookies please go to this Wikipedia article about cookies.

Home
Click the MNT logo in the top left corner of each page to return to the home page and review the latest articles for the day.

News categories
If you are interested in a specific medical area, this can be selected by hovering on the relevant letters in the categories shortcuts on the right hand side of the blue menu bar at the top of the page.

If you are reading MNT on your mobile device or in a small window on your computer, the list of news categories will be transformed into an icon composing of three horizontal lines (a hamburger). If you click on the icon a dropdown menu will be shown. You may use this menu to access your custom news categories (see below), as well as a complete list of our medical news categories.

Your categories
If you are logged in to your MNT account, this menu item will give you the option to select from your top 10 favorite categories (based on the order you selected previously). This menu item will be absorbed into the "hamburger" described above.

Notifications
Click on the opinions icon (two overlapping speech bubbles) will take you to our main opinions page. This will show you a list of all opinion threads on MNT, sorted from the most recent, to the oldest.

Opinions
Click on the opinions icon (two overlapping speech bubbles) will take you to our main opinions page. This will show you a list of all opinion threads on MNT, sorted from the most recent, to the oldest.

Search
Click on the spyglass icon to on the right of the menu to reveal the search box. You may type a search query into the box, at which point you will notice a set of suggested news categories appear under your query. You may chose to click on one of these results to be taken directly to that news category, or click on the "Search" button to search for the term you entered.

You can change the size of text on this site by using your web browser settings. In Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox you can set this by going to the menu 'View' and then to 'Text Size'.

Below is a list of access keys that can be used on this site. If you are using Windows, use ALT followed by the key stated. If you are using an Apple use CTRL+OPTTION followed by the key stated:

• [ h ] Back to Homepage
• [ x ] Accessibility Page - also containing this list of shortcuts
• [ m ] News Category List
• [ a ] About Us
• [ r ] Advertising
• [ s ] Archive Search
• [ k ] RSS/XML News Feeds
• [ j ] Javascript News Feeds
• [ t ] Free Content & Tools
• [ y ] Opinions Forum
• [ o ] Medical Jobs
• [ l ] Links
• [ c ] Contact Us

The combinations of keys required to trigger these shortcut keys can sometimes change, so we recommend checking here for updates to your specific web browser and operating system combination.

The search box can be found at the top of the page in the header on the right. The search will find any articles with your search terms in the headline. Unfortunately it is not possible to exclude search terms at present or to search for specific phrases.

Once you have submitted one search request, the results page will display the results and any relevant categories, as well as provide you the option to further refine your search by searching between specific dates, or allowing you to search article bodies.

Going to the "opinions " link at the very top of the page will allow you to see the most recent opinions posted by Medical News Today readers. Clicking on one of the opinions will bring up all of the opinions posted which relate to a certain news article.

When you are reading any news article, under the article title you will see the Main Category the article is posted to, followed by the article date, and a line of links. The 3rd link is "view / write opinions". Clicking on this link will bring up any opinions already posted for this article and will allow you to add your own.

To add an opinion you can either go to the bottom of the opinion thread (and fill in the form that appears there) or, to write an unrelated opinion, you can click on the "Submit a new opinion" button appearing below the bold header on the right "Your Opinions on Medical News" to write an unrelated opinion.

The name that you enter in the form will appear online and will be picked up by Google - so if you wish to remain anonymous you need to enter just your first name or "Anon". The e-mail address you provide will not appear in the post, we will only use it to send you confirmation that your opinion has been placed online.

We are unable to answer any medical questions - please consult a qualified doctor or pharmacist. We will not respond to these e-mails or those asking about medications.

If your query relates to an article that we have posted you are welcome to post an opinion in our opinions forum.

To submit news articles for inclusion on MNT, please send them to pressrelease@medicalnewstoday.com

To notify us of an error in a news article please use our feedback form.

You can also visit our "contact" link in the menu bar, which has our address and other contact details for advertising, editorial and technical inquiries. The feedback form can also be found on the contact page.

Takes about 5 minutes to set up on your website (you need to be able to paste code directly into your site).

This news feed will display just the headlines for the section you choose on your site, which will be updated daily. The headline link opens in a new window.

You need to fill in your details on the Javascript news feed form:

• Name: If you have any characters in your name that are not A-Z please omit them (e.g. O'Connor would need to be written O Connor and if you have accents in your name these also need to be omitted).
• E-mail address: In case there is a problem with the feed and we need to contact you. We will also send you a confirmation e-mail including the address of the page containing your code, to enable you to copy it again if necessary. We do not share your personal records. 
• Organization Type, Company/Website name, Website description: For our records to enable us to monitor our news feeds.
• URL: This is the website address to which you would like us to link - it needs to be written out in full - most sites begin with "http://www." Therefore, to place a link to Medical News Today, the URL would be http://www.medicalnewstoday.com
• Please read our terms of use before applying for a news feed.
• Clicking on "I agree to the terms of use" will take you to the "Create Your News Feed" page where you can select your preferences for the news feed.

You can return to the "Create Your News Feed" page, if you wish to change any of these details later (to make changes you will need to replace the code on your site with the newly generated one). The URL for this page will also be sent to you in a confirmation e-mail, using the address you entered previously. But we recommend that you copy the complete address (URL) for this page now (found in the bar at the top of your Internet browser). 

Number of headlines: This will determine the number of headlines that appear and the subsequent height of the box on your site. We allow you a maximum of 30 headlines at a time. 

Background color / Font color: This will only set the background and font colors for the top and bottom of the table - the headlines will always appear on white and pale blue alternating lines and the font color for the headlines will be dark blue.

News search box: This allows visitors to search for any news articles on our site, regardless of the date. 

Type of news feed:

• The "Full News Feed" will give you the entire days' headlines from every news section - we tend to place about 100 articles a day, so if you are only showing 20 articles in your news feed then you will only have the most recently entered articles.
• Clicking on "Customized News Feed" will bring up the entire list of our medical news categories for you to choose from. Please be aware that at the top of the news feed it will list every section you choose (so if you would like more than a couple of news categories it might look better if you set up different news feeds on your web site - and make it easier for your visitors to find the news in which they are interested). We allow you a maximum of 10 categories for customized feeds.

Once you have made your selections please click on the "Create News Feed" button. The code that appears in the text box below the button needs to be copied and pasted into your site in the place that you would like the news feed to appear - please take care to copy the entire code in the box and enter it exactly into your web page. 

Upload the page you have been working on to your website- the news feed should now appear on your site. Click on one of the headlines that have appeared to make sure the feed is working and to activate your return link.

This option is quite simple if you are using Feedly, Digg, Newsblur, or any number of RSS newsreaders to gather and read news.

You can find more information on RSS and XML feeds here. 

If you already have an RSS reader installed on your site / computer, please go to our list of RSS feeds. 

Choose the section in which you are interested and simply copy the URL (The full web page address of the feed - for example the "Main News" URL is https://rss.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.xml ) which can be seen directly beneath the section name. This needs to be placed into the appropriate 'add feed' section for your reader. It will then collect and display the latest headlines.

Please ensure that your anti-spam software has been configured to allow e-mails from newsletter@medicalnewstoday.com or newsalerts@medicalnewstoday.com. Our weekly e-mails are over 100kb in size and some spam filters are configured to reject large e-mails. 

In the last e-mail you received from us / your confirmation e-mail, there is a link to a page where you can change your details (for data protection reasons we are unable to provide it here). Enter your e-mail address in the "Change My Details" box and it will tell you if you are still in the database. If your details come up then the e-mails are still being sent to you. If your details don't come up then you will need to sign up again (if 3 e-mails have been bounced from an e-mail address in a 4-week period the e-mail address is removed from the database). 

We are currently experiencing difficulties with sending to Hotmail e-mail addresses - they randomly let some of our e-mails through and block others, with no explanation. We have tried a number of times to resolve the problem, but are finding it difficult to get answers to our questions. So, for the time being, if you have a Hotmail account, subscribing to our e-mails using a different e-mail account is recommended. We apologize for the inconvenience. 

If these options don't work you can either contact your e-mail provider to instruct them to allow e-mails from us, or contact us and we will look into it and see what can be done from this end.

Note: We are adhering to the SPF open standard in using SPF records for our domains, to help aid successful delivery to our email recipients.

If you have trouble opening or reading our e-mails, try changing your preference to "plain text e-mail" rather than "HTML e-mail" as there are a few e-mail programs that don't like HTML e-mails. The page to change your preferences was detailed in your confirmation e-mail when you signed up for the e-mails. If you need help with this please contact us and we will be happy to change the format for you.

It is possible to shorten the line length by reducing the browser window size - simply click on the edge of the screen and drag it in (or the box in the bottom-right corner on a Mac) and the text will resize itself.

Our tech team works to make sure that most routine maintenance work takes place during the night for the majority of our visitors, but occasionally have an important update that can't wait. we apologize to visitors who are inconvenienced by this, and will endeavor to get the site up and running again as soon as possible.