As we are a community driven site, all of our content is generated by our members, so we do have some basic rules and guidelines to help you along and to make you aware of what is allowed and what's discouraged.

The guidelines below have been created to allow every member to enjoy their time on A1, whether browsing or contributing, and we run a tight ship here to ensure the guidelines are adhered to at all times. The guidelines aren't here to force you all to sit up straight, or make you tread on eggshells. They are merely here to ensure that A1 remains a friendly place for UK Business owners to discuss their ideas, ask questions and help other budding entrepreneurs out.

So, please take just 5 minutes to read through the guidelines, which we have tried to keep clear and concise, ensuring that everyone has a good time!

General Guidelines when using A1 Business Forums
Be courteous and respectful at all times, especially when other people’s opinions and advice differs from your own. If you have something difficult to say, or there is something that you strongly disagree with, be direct and civil, but be constructive at the same time.

Threads, and posts within them, will be edited, locked, moved or deleted at the discretion of the moderation team. We are happy to review a decision if you feel that we have made an error – please contact us if you feel a review is needed.

A1BF is a privately-owned forum and all decisions will be taken in the best interest of the forum, the owners and the members, depending on the nature of the issue. A1BF will take action to stay legal and compliant at all times, and also to ensure it works in the interests of it’s members as a whole.

Please use the feedback forum to highlight any technical issues, rather than sending PM’s to moderators, unless it is important or of a sensitive nature. This should include the details of your issue so that we can look into it. If you have something sensitive to discuss, please contact us directly.

We regularly check the feedback forum and anything technical or sensitive may require a little longer to resolve, so please bear with us.

If you believe that a post is breaching forum rules and guidelines, please report it using the Report Post icon (). The moderation team will then receive an email alert. This means we can go straight to the offending post and deal with it swiftly. No one will know you have reported it, and it will help to maintain the quality of information you’ve come to expect at A1.

Use of the Private Messaging system is a privilege, not a right. Please do not abuse this right by messaging our users advertising your services, products and yours or other sites.

A1 Business Forums and articles. As you may be able to tell, A1 Business forums has an advance content management system for publishing articles. We welcome all article submissions as long as they follow these basic guidelines:

1. The article must be your own work or you have full written permission to replicate it on your site
2. If the article is not your own work, then the original author must be credited in the footnotes
3. The article must not be a work of pure self-promotion, it should be a guide for our members or a knowledge sharing exercise.
4. Your article should be at least 200-250 words long with correct grammar and punctuation.
5. Your article must be in English

Most A1 members have the right to add articles to our site but they will need to be authorised by a member of the moderation team before they will appear on the site.

General Conduct

In order to retain our friendly forum atmosphere, we will not tolerate:

• Abuse to members or A1 mods/admin/owners
• Foul or offensive language, discrimination of any kind and personal abuse
• Spamming the forums either via posting on the forum or via private messaging.
• Naming and shaming of individuals or businesses
• Negative advice or opinion which is not helpful or constructive
• Abuse of the PM system
• Offensive usernames
• URL's in usernames
• Breach of copyright
• Disrespect and rudeness
• Blatant self promotion of your business where not permitted
• Links to illegal, unethical or immoral sites or information
• Material or links to material that can be deemed offensive or inappropriate
• Inflammatory posting
• Multiple accounts per person

Breaching of the above may result in a permanent or temporary ban.

Posting Rules

When posting your advice, questions, thoughts or opinions, please remember not to abuse threads and posts by adding your own links back to your website except if it is directly relevant and helpful to the thread author. If it isn’t, the link may be removed at the discretion of the moderation team.

Threads requesting a website review may only be started by A1 VIP members.

You are required to have 15 posts before you can post a link in a thread. Any posts in any thread that appear to be one liners, pre-cursors to spam, self-promotion of your business or off-topic, in order to achieve this post count will be removed, and your account may be banned. Trying to circumvent link detection by 'fragmenting' your URL will result in it being removed.

Bumping posts to keep them at the top or posting to get post count up will result in posts being deleted if the post content is not deemed a genuine natural response. Having a conversation with yourself in a thread is deemed topic bumping too!

Private Forums

A1 Business Forums offer several free Private Forums for our regular members. In order to post and view these forums, you are required to have been a member for 30 days, and have a minimum of 50 posts.

Our private forums are not spiderable by the search engines, and only open to regular members of the forum. There are three private forums available:

• Private Business Forum - To discuss sensitive business issues
• Private Website Review Forum - Got a website that's still being developed? Have your website reviewed whilst it's still under wraps!
• Lively Banter and Gossip - This is a private 'time out' chit-chat forum

Access to the above forums is given as a privilege to members who meet the requirements above. However, should a member abuse this privilege, it will be removed.

Signatures

We welcome the use of your signature to promote your business. Once you have made 15 posts, you will be able to create a signature. Signatures are limited to a maximum of five lines.

In the interests of avoiding unsightly signatures, please refrain from increasing the font size in your signature.

We will edit signatures that do not meet the rules above. Please note, that for clarity, we will consider anything that you sign off your post with as your signature - not just the signature facility within vBulletin.

Self Promotion of Your Business

We’re all in business, and we all need to put food on the table. Self promotion of your business is allowed where appropriate. However, if your post appears to be of a spammy nature, or seems to be a direct advertisement, this will be removed. If you are a new member, an initial advertisement may be viewed with suspicion by our other members - so why not introduce yourself and get stuck in to the forum first, before advertising your wares!

We have two forums where you are allowed to promote your business, each of which have their own rules. Threads posted in these forums will go to a moderation queue before being published, so please ensure that your thread meets the rules for each forum. If they don’t, your thread will not be published.

Images and Files

Please do not post or link to images, files or pages which might be deemed inappropriate. A1 Business Forums is a family friendly forum - if you’d not show your grandmother, then don’t post it!

You can attach up to 5 images up to ~500Kb in size to your post if required. This will be automatically resized to fit the forum.

The Moderation Team

A1 Business Forums is moderated by a group of volunteers. As such, please treat them with the respect and politeness that they deserve, and remember, they are members too. If you disagree with an action that a moderator has taken, then please let us know.

Disclaimer

A1 Business Forums is a brand owned by Open Minded Solutions Limited, a company registered in England and Wales with company number 05338357.

Views expressed on the forums, including those via private messaging, are those of the user who has submitted them, and not those of A1 Business Forums or Open Minded Solutions Limited.

Open Minded Solutions Limited, and the moderation team at A1 Business Forums, reserve the right to remove content as deemed fit and remove or restrict access to members at their discretion with or without prior notice.

The private messaging system on A1 Business Forums is just that - a private messaging system. No one has access to read, edit or delete your messages.

Content

By posting content on A1 Business Forums, you are agreeing to indemnify Open Minded Solutions Limited and any and all members of the A1 Business Forums moderation team from all claims, costs and expenses (including legal expenses) arising out of any content published by you.

By submitting, posting and publishing content on A1 Business Forums, you are granting Open Minded Solutions Limited a perpetual royalty free non-exclusive license to reproduce, modify, translate, make available, distribute and sub-license the content in whole or in part and in form.

A1 Business Forums exists to create a friendly atmosphere for all businesses, big and small. On notification that content published by one of our users is deemed offensive, libellous or defamatory, we will investigate and remove the content where necessary, and where there is a clear legal reason for us to do so. We will however protect our members’ right to freedom of speech where there is sufficient reason to believe that the content published, is that of a true and honest opinion of the author.