Subscription FAQ's

Click on this link.

This new website comes with a new login process. So if you believe you still have an active subscription, use the sign-in link at the top right, enter your email address, and then, if you receive a login email, follow that link to log in. After you do that, clicking on "account" will tell you your current subscription status.

If the system tells you that there's no one registered under that email address, you don't have an active subscription. If the system logs you in but says you just have a "free" account and you're hitting the paywall when you click on articles, that means your former subscription has expired and you'd have to start a new one - you still have a login, just not a subscription.

Use the sign-in link at the top right. Enter the email address associated with your subscription and the system will send you an email. Click on the link in that email and you'll be logged in.

In that email, below the orange "Sign In To IlliniBoard" button, there's a web address. Cut and paste that web address into the browser you're trying to use and you'll be logged in there. And that login should be good for six months (unless you have your device set to log out of every website when you close your browser).

One thing to note: make sure that it's a cut-and-paste (or a right-click and then "open in browser"). Simply clicking on that link might give you the same issue.

Check your spam folder. We've also received reports from a few people that the email went to the "Promotions" folder in Gmail, so check there too. If you still don't see it, email Robert at Robert@illiniboard.com.

Once you are logged in, you can click on "Account" in the upper right hand corner and a screen will pop up telling you your renewal date, your subscription status, your current payment method, and everything else. As long as you keep that payment method current, your subscription will renew each year on the same date, so there's no need to remember to renew.

When you're logged in and click "Account" in the upper right corner, the next screen will have a "Change" option under the Membership tab. Click that and there's a "Cancel my subscription" button on the next screen.

We have three tiers:

• $25 for one year is our Introductory Membership. After one year, that $25 introductory subscription will upgrade to a full ($77 per year) Grange membership. And you can cancel at any time in that first year.
• The main subscription tier is called our Grange Membership ($77 per year - get it?). That membership includes all of the extras including the season previews, the newsletter, and the IlliniBoard Slack channel (it's kind of our message board for upper tier subscribers).
• The third tier is the Seventeen Club. This is for people who want to support Robert directly. There are no additional amenities (at least as far as previews and newsletters go), but you will get access to Robert at any special events for Seventeen Club members only. Seventeen Club (see Robert's Twitter bio for an explanation of what "seventeen" means) is $17 per month.

If you have an introductory membership and you want to upgrade to a Grange Membership before your one year at the introductory price is completed (for someone who wants to receive the football preview, for example), select "Change" on your membership and then select the new level. The system then automatically prorates your existing subscription and only charges the difference. So if you subscribed at the $25 level in October and wanted to upgrade to $77 in August so you can receive the football preview, the system would charge you just the final two months of upgrading (approximately $9 in that scenario).

That was eliminated with the 2024 website upgrade. Instead, I will have the option on the back end to make some articles free for all and some articles locked behind the paywall. Obviously, if I'm writing about non-sports stuff (like, say, the articles I've written about the Special Spectators tailgates and such), I'll make all of those articles free. But for the everyday Illini articles, there's now a firm paywall.

The process which was outlined above (click sign-in, enter email, go click the link in the email you receive) can be repeated on all devices. And it should stay connected (like all of your other logins) for up to six months. Yes, just like ESPN (or whatever), sometimes you'll go to log in and you'll find you have to go through the process again because it disconnected. But the process should be super simple now. For each device, enter your email address, click on the email you receive (using the device you want to use for the login), and you're back in.

Yes. If you're one of the students who showed up to that one Northwestern football game ten years ago when I tweeted "thank God you're here - email me a photo of you at the game and I'll give you an IlliniBoard membership for life", those accounts are active on the new site. Just log in under that email address. And if you no longer have that email address, send me an email and we can change it to your new one.

@IlliniBoard on Venmo is the new tip jar.

Yeah, that was a glitch when we changed some people over to the new system. We are currently going through and updating everyone so that their account represents their correct subscription level. It won't change anything on the user end, and it won't change the renewal amounts. It will just update everything so that it says "Grange Membership."

Just email me. Robert@illiniboard.com