Terms of Service
2:Privacy: Violations of - Privacy may be only an illusion, but protect that illusion. If someone wants to keep their real life identity private from the community, they should be allowed to do so. The administrators of this site will work hard to keep your information private. We only ask that you do the same for others. Should you happen to discover details about the true identity of any person using this service, you should treat those details as secret unless shared publicly by that person.
3:Conduct - Good Idea: Respecting others. Bad Idea: Making threats. We do not permit our service to be used to violate anyone’s rights or to threaten any other person. While we do not actively monitor every blog and comment on this service, we do take complaints seriously. Discussions on the Internet can become very heated and people sometimes get carried away. We understand this. But if you threaten harm against any person you will be banned from the service, and we will assist any effort by law enforcement to uncover your identity.
4:Information Gathering - Good Idea: making personal connections. Bad Idea: building a spam database. If you want to provide an opt-in box to collect email signatures from people who have been informed that they are joining your marketing list, that’s fine. But when people merely comment on your blog you do not gain the right to send unsolicited email (spam) to those users who submitted such comments. If you host a blog with this service, you will be able to see the email addresses of commenters. This privilege is extended only for the limited purpose of getting in touch with such people directly in case you wish to respond to their comment outside the public view of your blog. No other use of private information is permitted without the express consent of the person who gave you that information.
5:Hacking - Good Idea: Enhancing your blog through scripting. Bad Idea: Using scripts to exploit security vulnerabilities. If you create a blog, your posts, pages and comments on that blog will be “unfiltered”. By contrast, people’s comments on blogs they do not own are “filtered”, effectively limiting what they can post for the sake of security. This means you can embed pretty much whatever you like on your own blog, and you accept that other people can put whatever code they like on their own blogs. The up-side is that you have nearly complete freedom to create what you wish, such as putting up widgets, ads, tracking software, and other assorted goodies. The downside is that some scripts may attempt to exploit people’s browsers and even try to steal personal information. In using this service you agree not to post any potentially harmful code or try to cause any person to view pages they do not expect to see (aka “browser hijacking”). You also agree not to hold us responsible if an unscrupulous user posts such code on their own blog, even if that code results in damage to your computer or theft of your personal information.
6:Copyrights - Good Idea: Creating good content that people like. Bad Idea: Stealing it. You agree not to post any copyrighted material on your blog to which you do not own the rights. You also accept that anything you post on your own blog may end up being reproduced elsewhere. While it is your right to reserve whatever intellectual property rights you wish in regard to your own creations, you will not hold us responsible for enforcing your rights beyond the limits of this site. If you wish to withhold any rights to content you create through the use of this service, you must clearly display your copyright policy either directly on your blog or in a page linked to from your blog. You also agree not to reserve any rights to content you did not create.
7:Community - This service is focused on building and supporting the rich community of bloggers within and around Harrisonburg VA. By using this service you understand that you are implicitly a part of that community. Unless you choose to set your blog up as private, you understand that a link to your blog may appear in the site’s directories, and your posts and comments may be headlined on the site homepage. Any comments you make on any other blog hosted with the service may also appear on the site homepage, regardless of whether your own blog is set up as private.
8:Reliability - Good Idea: Making backups. Bad Idea: Tempting fate. This service is provided to you free of charge in the hope that you will find it useful. But we can accept no liability if your blog posts, pages, or comments should suddenly become inaccessible or corrupted. These things do happen sometimes. You can and should back up your blog from time to time. If you need help figuring out how to use the automated backup service built into your wordpress blog, just send an email to and someone will be happy to walk you through it.
9:Splogging - Good Idea: Creativity. Bad Idea: Repetitivity. “Splogging” is short for “spam blogging”, and we don’t tolerate it. If you want to post something to promote your business or someone else’s, that’s fine. If you make it interesting you may even find that it brings you some new customers, and we say more power to you (this is America, after all). What we absolutely do not allow is posting the exact same thing over and over as part of any scheme to keep lots of links pointing from the directories back to your blog. Prolific blogging is acceptable (and encouraged!) so long as your posts are original. But put up 50 posts a day that all say pretty much the same thing and you may suddenly find your blog de-indexed. Plus, if you host with us, the search engine spiders may be instructed to avoid the pages within your blog’s main directory. Though we probably won’t delete any hosted content so long as these terms of service are not violated in some additional fashion, “splogs” will fairly quickly be relegated to that part of the internet that everyone avoids.
10:Security - Good Idea: A secret password. Bad Idea: The word ’secret’ as your password. You are responsible for anything posted under your own account. Either pick a hard to guess password or keep using the random one assigned to you automatically. Keep your password safe, and if you suspect that someone has been using your account who shouldn’t be, then send an email to so we can reset your password for you.
11:Miscellaneous - You understand that Harrisonburgblogs is a blog hosting and blog aggregator service, and is not responsible for the content that individuals who use the service choose to create. The views expressed by such people are their own and in no way reflect on the views of Harrisonburgblogs. However, by using the service you agree not to post any content which is defamatory, racist, tortious, threatening, libelous, intended to incite or facilitate criminal activity, infringing on the privacy of others, or that reveals classified information or trade secrets. Harrisonburgblogs reserves the right to de-index any blog from appearing in the site directories if it violates any of these TOS, and in extreme cases, the right to delete a hosted blog from the site altogether. These terms of service are binding on every person who uses the service to create or distribute content, whether by hosting a blog, adding an rss feed, or simply leaving a comment. If you do not like these terms, then you should not blog here. Please report any violations to . These terms may change from time to time and without notice.
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