If you sell anything, or have a ".com" commercial domain, you are considered a business for the purposes of this document.
If you have a business and post to the forums, please read this page in its entirety. If you choose not to, you will nevertheless be held to the consequences of ignoring what is outlined here.
Advertising is strictly forbidden in forum messages.
This does not mean that as a business owner you cannot use the forums. It means you cannot use forum messages as a means of advertising. Even our paying advertisers are not allowed to that.
If you have a business, mentioning the name, providing a link, giving the phone number, etc., are all forms of advertising. Linking to an informational page at your site where items are sold is an advertisement. If you post such a message under a pseudonym, it is still an ad. In sum, if at least part of the reason you are posting is to let people know about your business, it is an advertisement. This is exactly what our paying advertisers are trying to do: get people to their site or business.
That Home Site offers a range of advertising options that include a very inexpensive listing in the Shopping Directory. Therefore, there is no excuse for even the smallest business that wishes to advertise not to do so legitimately.
By posting an ad, you will have ignored the instructions, the user agreement and this warning. If you proceed to post an ad, we will take these courses of action:
- You will be banned from the forums.
- Your URL will be added to a list of forbidden links. No message linking to your site will be accepted, whether it is from you or another user.
- We will use whatever means we choose to inform our users of your business practices and ask them not to do business with those abusing the forums.
