Terms & Conditions - inspiration and best practices
Disclaimer:We recommend that you consult with your Legal team before publishing a new set of terms & conditions.
When building a new community you will need to draft and publish a set of Terms & Conditions. These terms have to be accepted by all members and form the legal bedrock of your community, outlining key processes and policies. They often also include a code of conduct, which explains what you expect from your members, giving you a clear frame of reference to refer back to when taking moderation actions.
In this topic you will find best practices to help you craft and optimize your Terms & Conditions.
How to edit the Terms & Conditions
Go to Control → Customization → Phrases.
Look up the phrase 'terms' (Module: Forum, key: Terms)
Make your changes to the T&C (HTML & CSS styling is allowed)
Cllick on Save changes
View your Terms & Conditions by adding /site/terms to the end of your homepage url
Best practices
A Terms & Conditions page will generally include some or all of the following:
1. General Guidelines or Code of conduct You need to establish clear guardrails for the behaviors that are allowed in your community. The following themes are often included
No abusive behaviour against other members (e.g. insults / threats / racism / harrasment)
No off-topic discussion / intentional derailing of discussions
No multiple registrations
No 3rd party advertisements or commercial soliciting
No sharing of illegal content
No spam
No public discussion of moderation actions
2. Liability for user-generated information It’s a good idea to outline that your company can’t guarantee that all information in the community is accurate, and that any steps taken based on information found in the community is at the member’s own risk.
3. Removing content and banning users The community team is there to safeguard the experience for all members, and it therefore has the right to remove content from the community if necessary. The community team may also restrict access to the community (ban). Include the email address of your community team here, so that members can email you if they need to challenge a decision that has been made.
4. Links to third party websites You are not responsible for any material on other websites to which you or other users on your community link to.
5. Cookie Policy If you are using the default setup for cookies, you can use the default text which we place in your Terms & Conditions page. You can find a copy of this in the spoiler below:
What are cookies A cookie is a small piece of information that is stored on your computer as a file. Cookies enable us to recognize your computer on a subsequent visit. Cookies do not store personal information. We need your permission to use cookies.
How we use cookies Information we obtain from cookies are used to analyze our community. We use this data to adjust the community to your personal preferences. Finally, when sending information about our products and services, we can take your previous interest for certain pages into account.
Cookie setting You choose which cookies you want to allow. If you have an account you can adjust your choice in your profile settings. If you do not have an account, you can change your cookie settings by deleting them via the internet options of your browser and visiting the community again. You will then be asked to choose your settings again. There are 3 settings: Basic, Normal and Complete.
Basic: Functional
Normal: Functional + analytics
Complete: Functional + analytics + social media + embedded videos
Refuse cookies Don't you want to use cookies at all? Visit the help pages of your browser to turn off or reject cookies. Be aware, it is possible that not everything works or is displayed correctly when refusing cookies.
6. Availability of the community Some communities choose to include this to explain that they cannot guarantee availability, but it can also be used to forbid people attempts to break the community and it's functionality, or simply to inform that they cannot be held responsible for costs using the platform (e.g. from your internet provider).
Do you have some questions, or are you missing something? Share it with us in the comments!
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Hi team,
Where are these terms actually surfaced in the community? Are there any elements that link to this page?
Hi, I want to echo @Onomatopoeia’s question above. We have the same question. Where/how can we surface the Terms more persistently in the community so members can view them later or our community moderators can refer to them?
Also, when we make updates to the text of the Terms & Conditions, are all members auto-prompted to view them again and acknowledge/accept?
cc @mstruening@dandre@Dorothyt
Hi @Onomatopoeia & @JKelley ,
These terms are displayed upon user registration. The link is present here and all users must agree via the checkbox in order to submit the form and create their account. You can also add a persistent link to your header or footer using Customize mode in the front end or Customization in the control environment - let me know if you need any help with this.
To your second question @JKelley, users are not currently auto prompted to view and accept terms again when the Terms & Conditions are updated. I will raise this with our Product team now.
This is great, thanks for the quick reply @olimarrio! And yes, it would be great if in future there was a way to either auto-prompt members to acknowledge revised terms upon login, or perhaps a way to schedule that on an annual basis or something.
Hi! If our members want to view the T&C upon registration, they are rerouted to the login page. This is because they are not logged in yet to view the T&C, because they don’t have an account yet. Is there a way to link to the T&C without having to be logged in?
@annemijn.hintzen What you can do is link to a PDF of your terms, you can style it as you want so the experience is still good.
@olimarrio@Alistair FIeld
We have a weird solution to the T&C right now and I'm trying to fix this.
I want to add the phrase because we currently do not have it. But when I try to add the phrase it gives me an error. Can you help me out? In the sandbox I have no issues with this.
CurrentError when trying to add phrase
Hi! If our members want to view the T&C upon registration, they are rerouted to the login page. This is because they are not logged in yet to view the T&C, because they don’t have an account yet. Is there a way to link to the T&C without having to be logged in?
Yes, it’s not possible for new, unregistered users to view the T&Cs anymore. A new user in my community has discovered this gap during registration two weeks ago.
I contacted Gainsight support (not sure If I’m allowed to post here what they wrote exactly, maybe I need to read the Gainsight T&Cs again ): it’s possible to update the Phrase for a hyperlink to an external page with T&Cs.
But unfortunately, due to some reasons, we cannot use an external page at the moment. So, I experimented a bit today and added the T&Cs as a looong phrase below the registration form. It’s not beautiful, but at least the T&Cs are there so users know what they are actually accepting during registration.
@Karenottema, can you please explain this and how to do this exactly? Thanks!
You can redirect the Terms page to an external one with a redirect script:
<script>
if (window.location.href == 'old URL') {
window.location = "new URL"
}
</script>
Let me know if this doesn’t work for you. Also, feel free to submit another support ticket about this
Hi @leo-inspired
Thanks. Yes, I can change the link with the script (tested in staging community).
But the problem still remains: The redirection script works only within the community so terms are still only accessible if a user is already registered. According to support: it's not possible to make the terms link public anymore.
But a user needs to have the ability to see/read/access the terms first before accepting them, from a legal point of view.
Currently, if a user is not registered yet, the Terms & Conditions link does not open any terms but redirects to the login page, as @annemijn.hintzen wrote (btw: annemijn, how have you solved this?)
Maybe I’m overlooking something?
@Eva we followed Karen’s advice, and now we link to a pdf hosted on a HubSpot page. Good luck!
Hi @Eva,
I made a mistake when explaining this to you. The redirect script will not work for private communities.
What you’ll need to do instead is edit/add the Phrase below and have the href HTML tag redirecting to your external website:
Module: Common Key: loginBox.terms
This should do the job, however please let me know if you have any problems with this!
Hi @leo-inspired
It works. Not with the phrase you mentioned, but with this one: terms / Forum Terms
(I added the target="_blank" attribute to open the external page (google in my example) in a new tab, but this doesn’t work. Maybe it’s not supported)
So, I’m able to link to an external website now Also, the link to the Terms and Conditions has disappeared from the login page. Which is good, so unregistered users are not tempted to click on it
If you ever had a profile with us, there's no need to create another one. Don't worry if your email address has since changed, or you can't remember your login, just let us know at community@gainsight.com and we'll help you get started from where you left.
Else, please continue with the registration below.
): it’s possible to update the Phrase for a hyperlink 
