OM4 Terms of Service

Here is a quick summary of our Terms of Service:

  • Online Marketing Community. We (the folks at OM4) welcome you to join our online marketing community to establish and operate a business website and learn about online marketing.
  • OM4 Community Forums. While you are subscribed with an OM4 website we provide access to our community forums provided you comply with our Terms of Service.
  • Content. We give you a lot of control and ownership over what goes on your website and encourage you to express yourself freely. Be responsible in what you publish. In particular, make sure that none of the prohibited items listed below appear on your website or get linked to from your website (things like spam, viruses, hate content, etc).
  • Backup. We backup OM4 websites, but if you rely on your website for business outcomes you must make your own backups and alternative arrangements so that you can continue to operate your business in the unlikely event your OM4 website is unavailable for any reason.
  • Read On. Please make sure you read through the rest of the terms of service and agree with them before you get started.

Creative Commons LicenseAcknowledgement. We would like to express our appreciation to the folk at Automattic and WordPress.com. Automattic play a key role in developing and supporting the incredible WordPress software (that powers OM4’s sites and WordPress.com). They also created a sensible set of Terms and Conditions and published them under a Creative Commons Sharealike license, so that we can reuse them here.

Terms of Service

OM4 is a business that operates a community of websites including OM4, OM4Tourism, OM4Business and OM4Web (the “Community”).

The following terms and conditions govern all use of the Community, including all content, services and products available at or through the websites included in the Community.

The Community is owned and operated by Holipac Pty Ltd trading as OM4 (“OM4”), a registered business in Australia. The Community is offered subject to your acceptance without modification of all of the terms and conditions contained herein and all other operating rules, policies (including, without limitation, OM4’s Privacy Policy) and procedures that may be published from time to time on this Site by OM4 (collectively, the “Agreement”).

Please read this Agreement carefully before accessing or using the Community. By accessing or using any part of the Community, you agree to become bound by the terms and conditions of this agreement. If you do not agree to all the terms and conditions of this agreement, then you may not access the Community or use any services. If these terms and conditions are considered an offer by OM4, acceptance is expressly limited to these terms.

  1. Age. To use this service, you must be at least 18 years old, or have requested and received written approval from OM4 to operate. You must register yourself, you may not use a computer, bot or other automated method to register.
  2. Your OM4 Account and Website. If you create a website (with or without a blog) within the Community, you are responsible for maintaining the security of your account and website, and you are fully responsible for all activities that occur under the account and any other actions taken in connection with the website. You must not describe or assign keywords to your website in a misleading or unlawful manner, including in a manner intended to trade on the name or reputation of others, and OM4 may change or remove any description or keyword that it considers inappropriate or unlawful, or otherwise likely to cause OM4 liability. You must immediately notify OM4 of any unauthorized uses of your website, your account or any other breaches of security. OM4 will not be liable for any acts or omissions by You, including any damages of any kind incurred as a result of such acts or omissions.
  3. Reasonable Resource Usage. You may use a reasonable level of resources (including, but not limited to, web pages, posts, bandwidth, disk and memory), compared to websites for similar small to medium businesses. OM4 will determine reasonable usage levels, at its discretion. Getting a burst of attention from a major social network is not, by itself, an unreasonable level of resource usage.
  4. Responsibility of Contributors. If you operate a website or blog within the Community, comment on a blog or post to a blog within the Community, post links within the Community, or otherwise make (or allow any third party to make) material available by means of the Community (any such material, “Content”), You are entirely responsible for the content of, and any harm resulting from, that Content. That is the case regardless of whether the Content in question constitutes text, graphics, an audio or video file, or computer software. By making Content available, you represent and warrant that:
    • the downloading, copying and use of the Content will not infringe the proprietary rights, including but not limited to the copyright, patent, trademark or trade secret rights, of any third party;
    • if your employer has rights to intellectual property you create, you have either (i) received permission from your employer to post or make available the Content, including but not limited to any software, or (ii) secured from your employer a waiver as to all rights in or to the Content;
    • you have fully complied with any third-party licenses relating to the Content, and have done all things necessary to successfully pass through to end users any required terms;
    • the Content does not contain or install any viruses, worms, malware, Trojan horses or other harmful or destructive content;
    • the Content is not spam, and does not contain unethical or unwanted commercial content designed to drive traffic to third party sites or boost the search engine rankings of third party sites, or to further unlawful acts (such as phishing) or mislead recipients as to the source of the material (such as spoofing);
    • the Content is not obscene, libelous or defamatory (more info on what that means), hateful or racially or ethnically objectionable, and does not violate the privacy or publicity rights of any third party; and
    • you have, in the case of Content that includes computer code, accurately categorized and/or described the type, nature, uses and effects of the materials, whether requested to do so by OM4 or otherwise.

    By submitting Content to OM4 for inclusion within the Community, you grant OM4 a world-wide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, modify, adapt and publish the Content solely for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting your website. If you delete Content, OM4 will use reasonable efforts to remove it from the Community, but you acknowledge that caching or references to the Content may not be made immediately unavailable.

    Without limiting any of those representations or warranties, OM4 has the right (though not the obligation) to, in OM4’s sole discretion (i) refuse or remove any content that, in OM4’s reasonable opinion, violates any OM4 policy or is in any way harmful or objectionable, or (ii) terminate or deny access to and use of the Community to any individual or entity for any reason, in OM4’s sole discretion. OM4 will have no obligation to provide a refund of any amounts previously paid.

  5. Paid Services. A range of paid services (“Paid Services”) are available from OM4:
    • Web Design and Development Services. Web design and development and other services include services such as setup, content, consulting or advisory services.
    • Hosting and Administration. OM4 provides host server resources comprising hardware and software to enable the operation of web sites (“Hosting”). Required software updates and patches are applied to the resources and system backups are performed as part of regular administration services (“Administration”).
    • Support. If an OM4 product or service is faulty because it is not working to specification, support is available to rectify the fault free of charge via the OM4 Support Forums or via email. How To information and training documentation is provided free of charge via OM4 web sites. Personalised support for How To, training or other matters (that do not involve a fault in an OM4 service) via email, telephone or other channels is chargeable at the OM4 Hourly Rate.
    • Fees and Payments. By ordering Paid Services you agree to pay OM4 the fees indicated for that service (“Agreed Fees”). Payments may be charged from the day you sign up for the Paid Services and will cover the use of the relevant service for the period stated.
    • Refunds. Paid Services are billed in advance. Monthly hosting services – when you sign up for a monthly hosting service, you will be billed on the same day each month (“anniversary date”). Anniversary dates greater than the 28th will be adjusted to the 28th of the month. There will be no credits or refunds or credits for partial months of hosting services, subject to this refund policy and applicable laws. Other billable services. OM4 provides a range of services that by their nature incur costs in planning and carrying out the services. Due to the nature of these services, once approval to proceed is given, there are no refunds or credits for cancellation of services, subject to this refund policy and applicable laws.
    • Materials, Software and Instructions. OM4 may prepare materials for you (“Materials”) including, but not limited to text (copy writing, articles or similar), web design components, images, graphics, audio, video or digital files, and computer software (“Software”) including, but not limited to, computer programs, procedures and documentation. You may provide various information and instructions (“Instructions”) to OM4 for the purposes of completing the services and providing or publishing the Materials or Software. The Instructions may be in written, verbal or other form, in the form of a brief for setup, or provided directly or in response to interview questions from you.
    • Third party Providers. Premium Services may be provided by OM4 or a third party provider. In the case of a third party provider, OM4 may collect a fee for introducing the buyer and seller. Where you select a service from a third party service provider, unless otherwise stated OM4 does not provide any warranty in relation to the service, and you are solely responsible for determining the fitness or otherwise of the service provider, and are solely responsible for managing the quality of service delivery.
    • Relationship. OM4 is engaged by you as an independent contractor and this Agreement does not create a contract of employment or create a partnership between us.
    • Assignment of rights. Upon final payment of the Agreed Fees by you, OM4 assigns to you rights to use, modify and distribute (“Rights”) the Materials or Software prepared for you under the Instructions. This does not include any rights to the use of OM4’s or related parties registered names, business marks or logos, business methods, software or other intellectual property. Failure to pay the Agreed Fees to OM4 in full or requesting and receiving a refund of the Agreed Fees for the Materials shall result in all rights remaining with OM4. If any Rights have been assigned to you in return for payment of an Agreed Fee, your acceptance of a refund for the Agreed Fee constitutes an assignment of those rights back to OM4. OM4 retains the right to a copy of any source material used in the preparation and finalisation of the Materials and to display the final Materials and any key source documents as an example of OM4’s work.
    • Open source software. OM4 contributes to the open source community and uses open source software in part for the OM4 platform. Some of the software OM4 develops, including but not limited to software prepared as part of Paid Services engagements and WordPress plugins, may be published under an open source licence such as the GNU General Public Licence (“GPL”). Rights granted by OM4 to you to use, modify and distribute Software are not exclusive.
    • Rights in the Instructions. Upon provision of Instructions to OM4 for use in preparing Materials or Software, you guarantee that any elements of text, graphics, photos, designs, trademarks, or other input provided to OM4 in the Instructions for the Materials or Software are owned by you, or that you have written permission from the rightful owner to use each of these elements, and that the Instructions are accurate in fact. You will hold harmless, protect, and defend OM4 from any claim or suit arising from the use of the Instructions and such elements in the Materials and Software.
  6. Responsibility of Community Visitors. OM4 has not reviewed, and cannot review, all of the material, including computer software, posted to the Community, and cannot therefore be responsible for that material’s content, use or effects. By operating the Community, OM4 does not represent or imply that it endorses the material there posted, or that it believes such material to be accurate, useful or non-harmful. You are responsible for taking precautions as necessary to protect yourself and your computer systems from viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and other harmful or destructive content. The Community may contain content that is offensive, indecent, or otherwise objectionable, as well as content containing technical inaccuracies, typographical mistakes, and other errors. The Community may also contain material that violates the privacy or publicity rights, or infringes the intellectual property and other proprietary rights, of third parties, or the downloading, copying or use of which is subject to additional terms and conditions, stated or unstated. OM4 disclaims any responsibility for any harm resulting from the use by visitors of the Community, or from any downloading by those visitors of content there posted.
  7. Advice. Information available in the Community, either published by OM4 or other Community members, should not be used to make business decisions without considering whether formal advice from a qualified business advisor is required. There are many factors unknown to OM4 and/or Community members that may affect the applicability of Community material to your own circumstances. Before relying on Community material, you are responsible for ensuring, including by independent verification if necessary, its accuracy, currency or completeness. OM4 makes no representations – expressed or implied- about the suitability of Community material for any particular purpose.
  8. Competitors. You may not publish, or cause to be published, content (including articles, posts or comments) about competitors that is critical or negative of them.
  9. Content Hosting. OM4 operates as an Internet Content Host (ICH) under the Australian Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Act 1999. Other than its own websites, OM4 does not monitor the nature of the content published using its service. OM4 keeps backups from time to time for the purpose of being able to restore content should it be lost, but does not keep records of the content. You agree to monitor the content you publish using OM4’s service. You agree OM4 may make all necessary arrangements to take down or otherwise modify your content to comply with a directive from the Australian Broadcasting Authority.
  10. Third Party Content. All rights to display third party content on Community websites are reserved by OM4.
  11. Content Posted on Other Websites. We have not reviewed, and cannot review, all of the material, including computer software, made available through the websites and webpages to which Community websites link, and that link to Community sites. OM4 does not have any control over those non-OM4 websites and webpages, and is not responsible for their contents or their use. By linking to a non-OM4 website or webpage, OM4 does not represent or imply that it endorses such website or webpage. You are responsible for taking precautions as necessary to protect yourself and your computer systems from viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and other harmful or destructive content. OM4 disclaims any responsibility for any harm resulting from your use of non-OM4 websites and webpages.
  12. Copyright and Trademark Infringement. As OM4 asks others to respect its intellectual property rights, it respects the intellectual property rights of others. If you believe that material located on or linked to by a Community website violates your copyright, trademark or other intellectual property, you are encouraged to notify OM4. OM4 will respond to all such notices, including as required or appropriate by removing the infringing material or disabling all links to the infringing material. In the case of a visitor who may infringe or repeatedly infringes the copyrights or other intellectual property rights of OM4 or others, OM4 may, in its discretion, terminate or deny access to and use of the Community. In the case of such termination, OM4 will have no obligation to provide a refund of any amounts previously paid to OM4.
  13. Domain Names and Trademarks. You may not use, or cause to be used, a domain name for a website that infringes a trademark.
  14. Intellectual Property. This Agreement does not transfer from OM4 to you any OM4 or third party intellectual property, including, but not limited to, the OM4 Theme or OM4 Plugins that are not published specifically under the GNU Public Licence, and all right, title and interest in and to such property will remain (as between the parties) solely with OM4 or the third party. Some trademarks, service marks, graphics and logos used in connection with the Community may be the trademarks of other third parties. Your use of the Community grants you no right or license to reproduce or otherwise use any OM4 or third-party trademarks.
  15. Changes. OM4 reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to modify or replace any part of this Agreement. It is your responsibility to check this Agreement periodically for changes. Your continued use of or access to the Website following the posting of any changes to this Agreement constitutes acceptance of those changes. OM4 may also, in the future, offer new services and/or features through the Website (including, the release of new tools and resources). Such new features and/or services shall be subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement.
  16. Termination. OM4 may terminate your access to all or any part of the Community at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice, effective immediately. If you wish to terminate this Agreement or your Community website or account (if you have one), you may simply discontinue using the Community. All provisions of this Agreement which by their nature should survive termination shall survive termination, including, without limitation, ownership provisions, warranty disclaimers, indemnity and limitations of liability.
  17. Migration. You may migrate (move your website) from OM4’s hosting platform at any time. There are two options:
    • Option 1: Export to a New Theme – OM4 will prepare an export file of your website and send it to you. The export file will contain: a zipped copy of your exported website content (pages, posts and comments) in WordPress export format; a zipped set of files from your uploads area; a list of the plugins in use on your site and where to obtain them. You or your hosting provider then arrange for creation of a new WordPress website on a new host with appropriate plugins installed, importing your website content, uploading your files and making final configuration changes (including DNS) required on your new host. You may choose a suitable WordPress theme and recreate the look and feel for your website using existing design elements (included in your uploads), or use new elements to create a new design. OM4 does not charge a fee for carrying out the tasks defined for Option 1.
    • Option 2: Export with a Custom Theme – OM4 will carry out all tasks as per Option 1. In addition OM4 will convert your design configuration into a custom WordPress theme. You or your hosting provider may install your custom theme files to recreate the look and feel for your website. The fee for preparation of a custom theme is $270 USD.

    Note that as with any WordPress migration project, setting up and configuring a WordPress website site may require following instructions provided in the WordPress Codex or the use of automated tools and/or experienced assistance from a hosting provider or similar.

  18. Disclaimer of Warranties. The Community is provided “as is”. OM4 and its suppliers and licensors hereby disclaim all warranties of any kind, express or implied, including, without limitation, the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. Neither OM4 nor its suppliers and licensors, makes any warranty that the Community will be error free or that access thereto will be continuous or uninterrupted. You understand that you download from, or otherwise obtain content or services through, the Community at your own discretion and risk.
  19. Limitation of Liability. In no event will OM4, or its suppliers or licensors, be liable with respect to any subject matter of this agreement under any contract, negligence, strict liability or other legal or equitable theory for: (i) any special, incidental or consequential damages; (ii) the cost of procurement or substitute products or services; (iii) interruption of use or loss or corruption of data. The sum total of liability shall not exceed the aggregate total of fees received from you during the six (6) month period prior to the date the cause of the action accrues. The foregoing shall not apply to the extent prohibited by applicable law.
  20. Backups. OM4 is not responsible for loss of customer data due to server or hardware failure or any other reason. We regularly backup our systems and periodically check the outcome of the backup process, however where data of business value is being stored on an OM4 website it is the customer’s responsibility to maintain their own backups of their site and to have plans to continue their business without undue interruption in the event OM4 websites are unavailable for any reason. OM4 websites include a function that allows you to export your website content at a time of your choosing, and you should keep a copy of all files that you upload to your website.
  21. Security.OM4 takes steps to reduce the likelihood of unauthorized access to OM4 websites, however OM4 does not provide any warranty that it can stop unauthorized access from occurring.
  22. Search engine guidelines. OM4 supports the principles outlined by Google in relation to the Google Webmaster Guidelines. Websites operating in the OM4 community shall also operate in line with the spirit of these guidelines and be compliant with Google’s specific quality guidelines:
    • Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
    • Don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
    • Don’t send automated queries to Google.
    • Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords.
    • Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
    • Don’t create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware.
    • Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
    • If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.
  23. General Representation and Warranty. You represent and warrant that (i) your use of the Community will be in strict accordance with the OM4 Privacy Policy, with this Agreement and with all applicable laws and regulations (including without limitation any local laws or regulations in your country, state, city, or other governmental area, regarding online conduct and acceptable content, and including all applicable laws regarding the transmission of technical data exported from the country in which you reside) and (ii) your use of the Community will not infringe or misappropriate the intellectual property rights of any third party.
  24. Indemnification. You agree to indemnify and hold harmless OM4, its contractors, and its licensors, and their respective directors, officers, employees and agents from and against any and all claims and expenses, including attorneys’ fees, arising out of your use of the Community, including but not limited to out of your violation of this Agreement.
  25. Miscellaneous. This Agreement constitutes the entire agreement between OM4 and you concerning the subject matter hereof, and may only be modified by a written amendment signed by an authorized executive of OM4, or by the posting by OM4 of a revised version. Except to the extent applicable law, if any, provides otherwise, this Agreement, any access to or use of the Community will be governed by the laws of the state of Western Australia, and the proper venue for any disputes arising out of or relating to any of the same will be the courts located in Perth, Western Australia. The prevailing party in any action or proceeding to enforce this Agreement shall be entitled to costs and attorneys’ fees. If any part of this Agreement is held invalid or unenforceable, that part will be construed to reflect the parties’ original intent, and the remaining portions will remain in full force and effect. A waiver by either party of any term or condition of this Agreement or any breach thereof, in any one instance, will not waive such term or condition or any subsequent breach thereof. You may assign your rights under this Agreement to any party that consents to, and agrees to be bound by, its terms and conditions; OM4 may assign its rights under this Agreement without condition. This Agreement will be binding upon and will inure to the benefit of the parties, their successors and permitted assigns.