Thank you for your interest in signing up for an account with TheRealms.NetWorks web hosting services!  We're not going to sit here and make you read a bunch of bureaucratic political legalese.  We are going to require that you agree to and abide by the rules that we have set forth below.  This TOS/AUP may be long winded, however, it does protect both you and TheRealms.NetWorks, it's staff, it's affiliates and it's partners.

T Y P E S   O F   F I L E S   N O T   A L L O W E D:
You are not permitted to house on our server(s) any of the following files:

Should you decide to house any of these file types, we reserve the right to immediately suspend or cancel your account with no credit/refund due to you, regardless of the time remaining in your hosting period.  Furthermore, we also reserve the right to notify the proper authorities, providing them with logs, billing information, communications between yourself and TheRealms.NetWorks and snapshots/files from your FTP area.

E M A I L   U S A G E:
You are granted the right to utilize our server(s) for sending your electronic communications.  We do not snoop/monitor individual messages, however, we do monitor total usage.  It is STRONGLY recommended that you do not rely on our web based email system as your primary email program, as we cannot warranty or guarantee the stability of email that is continually stored online.  We do not back up any email accounts, and as such, cannot be held for missing or deleted emails.  Utilization of NeoMail, Horde or Squirrelmail as your primary email client is done at your OWN risk.

Each account is limited to sending out up to 250 emails, per hour.  Additional emails sent out will be placed into our Mail Spinner for processing for the next hour.  This includes any mailing list, forum/message board notifications, routine correspondence or web mail forms.  CGI/Perl Scripts are STRICTLY forbidden for usage as "Contact Us" scripts.  Formmail is a pristine example of a banned script, due to very insecure coding methods utilized.  Each account has PHP enabled and there are forms available for utilizing for your "Contact Us" page.  If you need one, please contact Douglas on the forums here.

We take a very, very serious stance against spammers.  We take pride in our server(s) and services, and will not stand for any account that has been found to be sending out spam/UCE.  Remember one thing:  All it takes is ONE abuse report to either us or our uplink provider (EV1Servers.net/RackShack), and your account is disabled, pending investigation.  If it is found that your account was utilized for spamming, your account will be closed immediately and you will forfeit all rights to any refunds/credits due to you.  You will also not be able to obtain your files.  Depending on the severity of the mailing, we may also turn this case over to the proper authorities, and we will cooperate fully against any legal proceedings that may occur.

If you have received an email that you feel is spam/UCE, please forward it to webmaster@therealms.net with ALL headers absolutely intact and unaltered.  We will investigate your complaint further and respond back to you in a timely manner.

As was noted above, we are dead serious about this issue, and we will not waiver from these guidelines.  We also encourage you to utilize http://spamcop.net for reporting any spam emails that you receive.

If your account was suspended for spamming, you will be assessed a $500.00 fee, plus $10.00 per incident that is reported to us.  We reserve the right to pass additional fees along should we have to turn this account over to a Collection Agency.  Fees shall be no less than $50.00 and no greater than $200.00, should we have to pursue any monies owed to us via a Collection Agency.

L A T E   F E E S   &   P E N A L T I E S:
While we do pride ourselves on bringing a personal touch to our web hosting services, we're also a fully functional and operational business.  Due to recent events, and the need to ensure quality customer service to all of our clients, TheRealms.NetWorks has implemented a late fee penalty.  We make every reasonable effort to ensure that your next billing cycle reminder goes out to you at least 30 days in advance, in addition to providing you with all of your billing information in our Customer Support Area (coming soon).  If your web hosting fees are more than 21 days late, we reserve the right to add on a $30.00 penalty to your hosting account.  This is in addition to a minimum payment (3 months) of your hosting package.  If we do not receive payment within 30 days of the hosting fees being due, we reserve the right to suspend your account and to charge a $50.00 reinstatement fee, in addition to your hosting costs due.  If payment has not been received within 45 days, we will assess a $75.00 charge, in addition to a minimum hosting fee for 3 months plus any collection agency recovery fees.  You will not be able to access FTP, Web site or Email services if your account has been suspended or closed.  Furthermore, if your account has been closed, we will take ownership of any and all files/emails stored on our server.

For Dedicated servers, timely payments are absolutely crucial to the operation of your server.  Late payments will result in a 50 percent surcharge for any server that you are 7 days late on.  In addition, we may require three months advance payment if this becomes an ongoing issue.

W E B S I T E   B A C K U P   G U I D E L I N E S:
At this time, TheRealms.NetWorks does not provide a physical facility for remote or onsite backups of your web site.  Each client is ultimately responsible for backing their own sites up utilizing the Backup option in their Control Panel (cPanel/ConPan).  It is strongly recommended that you back your site up weekly.  The exception to this is if you have hired TheRealms.NetWorks to develop your site for you, as well.  In that case, we retain a copy of the last adjustments of your web site stored on CDRW's.

U P T I M E   G U A R A N T E E:
While TheRealms.NetWorks takes great pride in having a proven and solid track record of having it's server(s) up 100% of the time, we all know that it's just not possible.  There are too many variables that can influence our uptime, such as inclement weather, power failures, system/hardware failure, server migration, server maintenance, software maintenance, DNS propogation or a client/customer utilizing server resources more than they should be.  As a result of this, we do not have a SLA/Minimum Uptime guarantee.  We will do everything in our power to ensure that your hosting package is up as much as possible, though.  We do strive for a 99.5% uptime, though we are unable to guarantee it.

I N D E M N I F I C A T I O N:
We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason not prohibited by law. Also we reserve the right to terminate service to any customer for any reason not prohibited by law. You agree to use all TheRealms.NetWorks hosting services and facilities at your own risk. TheRealms.NetWorks specifically disclaims all warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. In no event shall TheRealms.NetWorks be liable for any loss, or loss of data, or other commercial damage, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential or other damages. Customer agrees that it shall defend, indemnify, save and hold TheRealms.NetWorks harmless from any and all demands, liabilities, losses, costs and claims, including reasonable attorney's fees asserted against TheRealms.NetWorks, its agents, its customers, officers and employees, that may arise or result from any service provided or performed or agreed to be performed or any product sold by customer, it's agents, employees or assigns. Customer agrees to defend, indemnify and hold harmless TheRealms.NetWorks against liabilities arising out of:

• any injury to person or property caused by any products sold or otherwise distributed in connection with TheRealms.NetWorks's server.
• any material supplied by customer infringing or allegedly infringing on the proprietary rights of a third party.
• copyright infringement and
• any defective products sold to customer from TheRealms.NetWorks's server(s).

A D D I T I O N A L   F E E S   A N D   C H A R G E S:
TheRealms.NetWorks will not add any additional charges onto your hosting plan, prior to discussing it with you.  There are no cancellation fees (Please view "Cancellation Policy" below for more clarification on this), no fees tacked on beyond what you're hosting account is set up with (Set up fees, 3/6/12/18 month hosting account, and additional services).  Note:  If you purchase additional features for your account, a fee (one time AND/OR monthly cost) will be incurred, please check the hosting plans page for additional information.

Should web hosting prices increase or decrease, you will be notified no less than 30 days prior to the end of your current hosting agreement.  Your plan will remain exactly as it is until it comes time for your hosting package to be renewed.  At that time, you can utilize not only the new fee structure, but also any additional specials that we currently have.

S E R V E R   R E S O U R C E S   U S A G E:
Server resource usage affects not just your account, but everyone else on the same server that you are on.  As a result, we have placed restrictions on all accounts for security and safety reasons.  You are not permitted to run any kind of a script that grants you SSH/Shell/Server access.  You may not run any script that causes a process to appear (such as an Eggdrop IRC bot, etc, unless you have been specifically cleared to do so by TheRealms.NetWorks).  You are not permitted to run any script to send out mass mailings or to harvest email addresses.  If you have a higher end web site or a message board that has an extreme amount of activity, we may request that you move to our TRN Maximum'Un Account (Currently not available, soon though!), so that your high end site can be on a server that's specifically geared towards our higher end sites.  Also, by default, CGI/Perl is not enabled for each account.  If you need to have CGI enabled for your account, please log into the Customer Support Area and request that we enable it.

P R I V A C Y   G U I D E L I N E S:
Where to begin with this one?  Simply put:  We guard our own privacy voraciously, and we guard our client's/customer's privacy just as rigorously.  What does this mean to you?  It means that you can rest assured that we will NOT release ANY information about you or your hosting account to anyone.  We will NOT sell your contact information to any third party.  We will not call you for solicitations, we will not email you anything but server related information or hosting news/updates.  We may email you occasionally, letting you know about a special that we have, however, that will be provided in a link format, and in most cases, will be left for you in your Private Message inbox on our message board.  We will absolutely NOT divulge any information about you, even after you are no longer with us, unless we have suspended/closed your account ourselves, especially if your account was closed for spamming or flagrant violations of these guidelines, or unless we were ordered to do so by a court of law, or if we were to sell our hosting services to another company.  If the last case is EVER applicable, there would be a Non Disclosure Agreement signed by the purchasing party, and you would be given first right of refusal.  We may also email/contact you to determine your thoughts about our services.

C A N C E L L A T I O N   P O L I C Y:
There are no fees for cancelling your account, provided that you terminate it within 10 days of your next bill date.  We do, however, require no more than thirty (30) and no less than ten (10) days advance notice prior to your next billing date.  This policy covers shared hosting as well as any dedicated (or streaming) server.  If you are on a server and you cancell less than 10 days in advance of your next billing cycle, an early termination fee of 50% of your monthly rate for that server will be required.  Servers cannot be cancelled any less than 3 days advance of your next bill due date, for any reason.  All cancellations must be done via email or tickets.

R E F U N D   A N D   C R E D I T   P O L I C Y:
All shared Hosting plans are refundable, provided that you contact us via email/ticket.  All refunds will be done on a pro-rated portion of your remaining time and cannot include any credits or free time.    Set up fees and Domain Name Registration fees are absolutely not refundable for any reason.  Dedicated/Streaming server payments are not refundable, for any reason.

Credits:  We will apply credits due to situations within our control (Botched system(s) upgrades, hardware failures, server connectivity issues as a result of our actions).  We will not give credits due to weather related incidents, acts of war/terrorism, or end user negligence (deliberately sabotaging your site/email, or missing/deleted files).  You must request the credit within 10 days of the incident occuring, via email/tickets.  Credits will be issued on a sliding scale basis, up to 50% of your monthly rate for the specific server/account affected, and will be done as a service credit towards your next billing cycle.

Now... for YOU, the customer/client:
These are OUR guidelines for your hosting account.  Now, we get to YOUR rights here.  I hated writing the above section, now I get to tell you the fun stuff... YOUR rights as one of TheRealms.NetWorks clients/customers for web hosting.  Believe me when I say that I'd MUCH rather have you read this AFTER all the serious and business stuff above.

As I said, I'm not one for a bunch of political corporatese, so I'll spell your rights out cleanly and clearly...