Frequently Asked Questions

The NearlyFreeSpeech.NET FAQ (*)

General (*)

Q. What's the most common mistake people make while signing up for NearlyFreeSpeech.NET?

The most common mistake people make while signing up for our service is disregarding the unique one-to-one relationship between a person and their membership.

Your membership represents you as an individual. As it says in bold print on our signup page, you may only have one membership, you may not create a membership for anyone but yourself, no one but you may access your membership, you can't transfer your membership to another person. (Transferring some or all of the services on your membership to another member, on the other hand, is dead easy. So is sharing things if you have more than one person who needs to be involved.) You must also use your individual, real name on your membership.

These warnings and policies are there for a reason. When people don't follow them, then sooner or later problems result.

Don't: create memberships for other people.
Do: host their stuff for them on your membership or get them to do it themselves.

Don't: tell us your real name is "Company Inc." or "Organization Webmaster."
Do: create an account for the organization on your membership.

Don't: create a second membership for a new project or customer you want to work on.
Do: create a second account instead.

Don't: give your login credentials to somebody so they can help you or share responsibility.
Do: have them create their own membership and give them adjunct access to your site or share your account with them.

Basically, all we ask is that you don't pretend to be someone else. If you do, it will eventually result in problems. You may find yourself unable to log in, unable to make payments, or your membership may wind up in the hands of someone who has no idea what they're doing. Those problems are fixable (as long as the person whose name is on the membership is still around) but it's pretty certain they won't crop up on a day when you've got plenty of spare time and nothing better to do.