CST Policies

1. Abuse Towards Others
You will not post any materials which are defamatory, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy or in any violation of any International or United States Federal Law. This includes all venues and other sites. We understand that you may have some issues or wish to express and support other members with information you experienced with a specific venue or business, however we ask that you respect our members rights to choose and not post any direct attacks on any one business or venue by venue name or company owners name. You are always welcome to express your support to our members, share that a particular business or venue etc. didn't work for you, but we will not attack or demean other sites and business here, it is counter productive to what we try to focus on at CST. We want to gather good shared and valuable information with each other that will enhance and improve our independent online business sites, we will not be opening any discussions and can of worms on CST about specific business venues other than to express what works or didn't work. CST is no place to hash out and open up negative direct attacks on anyone anywhere.

2. Copyrighted Material
You agree not to post any copyrighted material unless you have consent of the owner or you have included the original content links back to the owner. So if you find an interesting article or link please always post that original link to that article and give credit to the location, author or site you are using their information from. Be sure to post the direct link to the article you are copying and not some other site or related to the article link. If you wish to refer to any other site from a post or thread here at CST we do expect that you also follow all copyright rules and not post exact post from our members without a referral link to our members original post. Anything that a member post is and does belong to that member and that member has sole copyrights to that post. You can certainly go to another site and say "I heard something from another forum about XXX and I was wondering what others think? You can not copy that post and add it to another site without the original posters permission and a link back to that original owners post.

You can not steal or hotlink to other people's avatars, siggies, banners, or any paid services that you have not paid for that you requested a paid provider to do for you. We also request that you do not copy any articles and content from other members sites without prior permissions.

3. Discussion of illegal activities such as software & music piracy and other intellectual property violations are not allowed.
Note that it is impossible for the staff or the owners of this forum to confirm the validity of all posts. Please remember that we do not actively monitor the posted messages, and as such, are not responsible for the content contained within. We do not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information presented. The posted messages express the views of the author, and not necessarily the views of this forum, its staff, its subsidiaries, or this forum's owner(s). Anyone who feels that a posted message is objectionable is encouraged to notify an administrator or moderator of this forum immediately. The staff and the owner of this forum reserve the right to remove objectionable content, within a reasonable time frame, if they determine that removal is necessary. This is a manual process, however, so please realize that we may not be able to remove or edit particular messages immediately. This policy applies to member profile information as well.

You remain solely responsible for the content of your posted messages, and retain all applicable copyrights. Furthermore, you agree to indemnify and hold harmless the owners of this forum, any related websites to this forum, its staff, and its subsidiaries.

4. Self Promotions
We are a private forum for does not promote self promotions of your business site. We do not index and are not in search engines. We offer a banner rotation that you can add a banner too that has a simple code that will be transferable to other sites and blogs if you wish to promote your business and those who have added a banner to the rotations on your sites and others.

5. Self promotions to your business sites are not allowed in welcome threads.
Our welcome threads are for introducing yourself and a little about who you are. We want to get to know you, and welcome you to our forum and community, we are not all that interested in what you sell or where your site is but who you are. Again we are a private non indexing forum and you are wasting time promoting your site on a forum that does not index. We want you here because we want to have you as a viable member of our group to share and support Ecommerce.

6. Siggies
CST is not here to advertise other business sites, venues or organizations that are not active participating members of this forum. We offer you a place to add your own business links banners in your siggies and only your own business sites.
If you personally do not own a business, do not add a banner or any link of any kind in your siggy to that business unless it is owned and operated by you.

7. Deletion Of Your Membership
There is a place in your profiles that allows you to delete your membership if you choose to do so without any questions asked.

If a member is inactive on CST for more than 90 days, CST has the right to delete those old accounts. We encourage active membership at CST and if that is not something you have time to do or interested in, we reserve the right to delete your accounts if inactive. Our community is important to us and we really want to share and support and hopefully grow with you, however, we do understand that may not be something you can do and if your membership is deleted, you will need to re register.

8. Your Privacy Rights
Creative Shop Talk will not disclose, sell or rent email address or other personal information to third parties. Users are prohibited from disclosing, selling or renting any personal information obtained as a result of their use of these forums to any other third party. subject to a possible termination of your membership.

Any violation of CST rules CAN and WILL result in loss of posting privileges or membership at the discretion of the administrators. You may be removed without prior notice. Also while these rules cover most common situations, they cannot anticipate everything. Consequently we reserve the right to take any actions we deem appropriate to ensure our forum is safe for all our members. Including making new additions and revisions to our policies as needed.

Administration reserves the right to alter and/or amend this user agreement at any time.

Participation at Creative Shop Talk indicates your agreement with and acceptance of these rules.

Thank-you
Alana (Administrator)