Diana the Valkyrie

Diana the Valkyrie's Web Site Members

This Membership is so that the Valkyrie can look after you. If you join the club, you will get more than if you don't, especially if you're at one of the higher levels of Membership. I need a T1 line to connect to this web site to take the hits, and until the telecoms companies offer free lines, the cost has to come from somewhere. Actually, it isn't just a T1, I have a 100 megabit link, roughly equal to 65 T1s feeding this web site. Plus a two megabit Megastream, plus six DSL lines ... you get the idea. And about 150 computers.

And I'm spending money to acquire new material; originating material by sending people to take pictures and videos at competitions and shows. This material simply wouldn't exist if I didn't spend the money to make it happen. Digitising videos needs equipment and disk space, a good quality scanner, digital cameras - you get the idea. Servers, hard disks ... everything costs.

Another important thing that your subscription goes on, is the Sponsorships. Diana the Valkyrie offers sponsorships to competing female bodybuilders; this can amount to $500 per month, and helps each sponsored woman buy the food, vitamins, supplements, travel and all other things that cost a lot of money, that you have to buy to compete seriously. In exchange, the sponsored women participate in the web site, in weekly chat sessions, and in their Message Boards. You can read more about this elsewhere on the web site. I also sponsor competitions, for example, I gave the 10th prize in the 1997 Ms Olympia contest; I was one of the two main sponsors of the 1998 Womens Strength Extravaganza in New Jersey. In 1999, I sponsored the Women's Extravaganza again. In 2000, I sponsored Christine Envall's trip to attend the "PICTURING THE MODERN AMAZON" show, and then Christine got a regular sponsorship from the web site. And so on.

You don't have to join, it's your decision. You'll still have access to a lot of stuff here. If you're worried about the cost, then you should figure that $5 is about two bottles of beer - will you get more fun out of two bottles of beer, or a month on this web site?

And if you're a significant contributor to the web site, you get a free Membership, see below.

When you do sign up, you'll get immediate access, unless your details need to be validated. If you gave me the wrong email address then I have no way of contacting you, and you should send me an email to fix this.

Non-members

You can access all the links and almost all of the stories. You can play most of the games and pastimes. You can look at the thumbnails in all the Art Galleries, and in a few of them, you can enter and see the pictures. You can read and post to the Message Boards (username non-member, password sesame). You can play the games in the Gamesroom, explore the Cockney Internet, visit the Chess Cafe. You can read the old archives of the Chatrooms, and see how people interact with Andrulla Blanchette, Nicole Bass, Sheila Burgess, Sonia Fernandes, and other big names. Not to mention our chatroom regulars like TomNine, HBP, sub, Scooby and dozens of others.

Check that everything works before becoming a Member. Until you're satisfied that everything works, and you've checked that the site has things that you like, and you're happy, don't sign up.

In future, some areas might move to member-only status.

 Silver Members

This costs $10 per month (roughly translating to four bottles of beer), and I'll renew the membership each month until you cancel. You get access to all the Galleries, all the stories.

In addition you get:

You don't get access to the  Audio area (see below).

You don't get access to  The Valkyrie Channel (see below). For that, you need Silver Plus Audio (or gold plus audio, or Platinum)

What your extra $5 is paying for, is the huge extra load on the telecoms that the Movies create, the several large (1,200,000 megabytes) additional servers that are used to store millions of pictures in the NewsThumbs area, and the extra load on the server that the searching and the chat room creates and the cost of making or buying in the other extras that Silver Members get.

Apply for membership using our Secure Signup Server

 Gold Members

This is $15 per month; you're automatically billed each month until you cancel. You get all the above, plus:

Your own web space for your own home page, up to 25mb of space. Use it for whatever you like; if you ask me, and if it's appropriate, I'll link to it. Maximum throughput per month is 500mb.

You can use ftp to and from your web space

What you don't get, is dial-up access. You need to already have access to the internet to make use of this. When you sign up for this, you also have to email me to tell me what name you want the thing to appear under (you might not want to use the name you use for logging on to the web site).

You don't get access to the  Audio area (see below).

You don't get access to  The Valkyrie Channel (see below). For that, you need Silver Plus Audio (or gold plus audio, or Platinum)

Apply for membership using our Secure Signup Server

 Platinum Members

Platinum Membership costs $25 per month; you're automatically billed each month until you cancel. For that you get all the benfits of Gold Membership (see above) plus Audio membership (see below). In addition, you get a $25 discount on all CD Roms that you buy in the Shopping Mall CD Rom shop, and $10 discount on each video that you buy in the Diana the Valkyrie Lift and Carry Video shop, the Diana the Valkyrie Tall Women Video shop or the Diana the Valkyrie Video shop. Please mention in the comments when you buy, that you're a Platinum member, in order to claim your discount.

If you aren't planning to buy anything in these shops, I'd advise you not to get Platinum Membership, but if you do intend to make purchases in those shops, you'll make a useful saving.

Platinum Membership is a simple way to make sure that you have access to everything that's here.

Apply for membership using our Secure Signup Server

 Audio Members

You can listen to the stories instead of just reading them; this costs an extra $5 per month, so it's $10 for Standard plus Audio, $15 for Silver plus Audio or $20 for Gold plus Audio membership. Platinum (costing $25) includes Audio. This works fine with WebTV. Please make sure that your computer can handle sound. You can go to Listen with Diana the Valkyrie to test it before you join.

 The Valkyrie Channel

This is "streaming video", video that starts to play shortly after you click on it. To watch the Valkyrie Channel, you need to have SilverAudio membership of the web site (or Goldaudio, or Platinum). You can see what's available and even try out a few clips. If you only have a 56K modem, you'll find the quality of this disappointing. You really want broadband; satellite, DSL or cable.

Want to change your level of membership?

If you're already a member, and want to change (for example, from Standard membership to Silver with Audio) then you can email me, and I'll do that for you.

The way I do it, is I assume that people want to change immediately. So I work out how many days they have left under their old membership, convert that to dollars, and work out how many days that gives them with the new level. You get the change immediately, and you don't lose by changing.

Gift membership

Make a friend happy with the gift of a month, a few months, a year or a long term membership to this web site. Ideal for someone you know who is difficult to buy a gift for. Perfect for a birthday present. Great for Christmas.

Sign up here for the gift that lasts and lasts

Want to cancel your membership?

If you're already a member, and want to cancel, and you know your username and password then you can fill in this handy Cancellation Form.

That only works if you have a current membership, and use the correct username and password. If you can't cancel that way, then email me at and give me as much detail as you can about your name, address, last six digits of the card you're using so that I can make sure that I cancel the right person.

You can either cancel immediately, or you can just let your current subscription expire, or you can even set up a cancellation to take effect in the future. If you can't use it for any reason, then email me instead and I'll do it.

The best way to cancel is by using the handy Cancellation Form.

If you cancel by emailing me instead, I'll email you back to confirm it. If you email me to cancel and hear nothing from me, then it's possible I didn't get your email. Or you might have given a return address that didn't work. But if I didn't get your email, then I won't have cancelled your membership. That's why my confirming email is important. So if my confirmation doesn't arrive within a few days, email me again. If I still don't respond, then either you got my email address wrong, or you're giving me a return address that doesn't work, so please check both of these. AOL members sometimes set up their accounts so that they can send, but not receive, email from outside AOL. It's better if you use the handy cancellation form. Then I won't send you an email, because the form will give you confirmation when you click on the button to cancel.

If you really can't contact me by email, you can post on the Diana Message Board, or you could write me a letter, surface mail, here's my address.

If you try to cancel by cancelling your ISP (for example, by cancelling AOL), that doesn't work, because no-one would tell me about it. If you try to cancel by cancelling your credit card, that might not work either! That surprised me too, but what happens is, I don't know about the cancellation, because your bank doesn't tell me, I continue to bill you, and for reasons I don't understand, some banks accept a billing on a cancelled card. All this applies, of course, to any service you sign up for, not just mine.

So, if you want to cancel, use this handy Cancellation Form.

I don't go by how much people use the web site; the $5 or $10/month is for having access. If you simply stop using the site, I won't even know that. You have to tell me to cancel.

Want to tell me about a new credit card number, or email address?

If you're already a member, and want to change credit cards, and you know your username and password then you can fill in this handy Change Form.

Want to change your username and/or password?

If you're already a member, and you know your username and password, and you want to change them then email me with your old username and password, and the new one you want.

Forgot your password?

This might help you get a reminder of your password. If it doesn't, then email me at valkyrie@thevalkyrie.com

Want to send me a message using the Secure Server?

You can safely use this for sending information like credit card data, it uses the same security that the signup form uses. For ordinary stuff, you can use this if you really want to, or you can email me.

Contributor Members

This is free of charge. If I decide you've done significant work to help make the site a success, I'll give you Contributor status. This gives you all the benefits of Silver plus Audio Membership. You also get access to the Contributor's Area.

Contributing might be writing stories, creating artwork, taking photographs or shooting video footage, and contributing a significant amount of material, helping in all sorts of ways. It could be anything. Not even a Valkyrie would try to do all this alone, and we like to say "thank you" where appropriate. Email me if you think you might qualify (a single story or picture is not sufficient).

Student Membership

This is free of charge. You still have to be over 18, but if you're a student, there's a way you can join without having to pay, but you'll be spending you time instead (doing something rather exciting and fun). Read about it, then email me if you're interested with what you propose to do.

Billing details

Once you've joined, we'll bill you automatically each quarter or month, until you cancel. If you cancel by sending me an email, then email me your username and password, or at least something so I can work out who you are, so I know who to cancel. You can cancel any time, but you'll be billed for any fraction of a period as if it were the full period (month or quarter). So, if you're planning to cancel, don't leave it until the day the billing is done, give me a few days notice.

If you join on the 26th of the month (for example), then your membership will run to the 26th of the next month, then the renewal will run to the 26th of the month after that, and so on.

I will not mail anything to your street address. You will not be telephoned. I will not pass your details along to another company.

You will get one email from me, confirming that you are on the database and have the access that you requested. You will get no other emails from me, unless you email me with a query or question, or unless there's some problem with your payment.

The payments will appear on your credit card as "DV Internet Services" or "INTERNET PRIVACY CHESHAM GB", or "dvalkyrie@aol.com Internet Priv" or possibly something similar to one of those - I don't have exact control over what your bank puts on the statement. The purpose of the email address, is in case you forget what the billing is for, then you can email that address and ask. My bank is in the UK; if you're not in the UK, your bank will regard this as a foreign bank, and might need you to reassure them that the billing is OK. If that does happen, I'll email you.

If you buy any products or services via this web site, we're going to ask for your credit card number again for the additional purchase; that's to protect you, of course.

If you join, and then change your mind, it is probably too late to stop the first billing, because a lot of this is automatic. You should assume that when you click on the button to join, you have committed yourself to joining for at least the minimum period (one month for Silver and Gold, three months for Standard). If you aren't sure that you want to join, think about it some more before clicking that button. On the other hand, if you're almost sure, $10 isn't really a lot to risk!

If you want to read the terms and conditions, please do.

Secure payment; no need to send your credit card over the internet

Some people may be concerned about sending their credit card details over the internet unencrypted; some people might be concerned even if it is encrypted using the secure server. If you, or your credit card company, are worried about this, we have a way you can send us your credit card details, without using the Internet at all.

Non-credit card payment

If you want to pay by cheque, check, money order, cash or uncut diamonds, there's a way that you can, but you have to join for a longer period. I wrote a document explaining how.

Junk email

I get too much junk email; I expect you do too. I won't send you any email, or any surface mail, except for

A) an initial welcoming message which lets you know that you're on the main database, and lets me know that your email address works

B) if you email me, I'll write back to you, unless it's the sort of email that obviously doesn't need or expect an answer

C) if your credit card expires, or I need to contact you for that sort of administrative reason

If you don't even want any of the above, say so in the comments. Then you'll hear nothing from me ever, unless you email me.

I will NOT give your details, or email address, or anything, to anyone else (except the credit card company). The exception to this is a written request from a police or court authority, in the course of their investigations.

The future

Valkyries don't make promises unless we know we can keep them. So, instead, I'll rely on my track record. If you've been visiting this site for a while, you'll have been watching it grow, in the size of the Library, the Galleries, the Movie Theatres and in the way I keep adding new facilities like the Chat Room, the Message Boards, Sandra the Librarian, Elizabeth the Cyber-Valkyrie, the Valkyrie Gym, the Movie Theatres, and the other services. And the NewsThumbs, the Valkyrie Channel and the Audio Area.

As of early 2006, there were 242 gigabytes of stuff on the site, including over 740,000 pictures. And over 150 million pictures on NewsThumbs, in several thousand gigabytes.

The big servers I build now, take 1000 gigabytes each, so I've got lots of space for growth.

Go to the Magic Carpet