Note: The Humanists.net program is not currently accepting applications for new Web hosting clients. If your group is interested in this service, please check back here periodically.

Frequently Asked Questions

What sites qualify for hosting on Humanists.net? To qualify for hosting on Humanists.net, your organizational mission and your website must reflect the sentiments in the International Humanist and Ethical Union's Minimum Statement on Humanism:

Humanism is a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives. It stands for the building of a more humane society through an ethic based on human and other natural values in the spirit of reason and free inquiry through human capabilities. It is not theistic, and it does not accept supernatural views of reality.

Additionally, you will be asked to agree to a list of terms and conditions provided to you before your account is created.

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What if we are already hosted elsewhere? We are happy to accept sites already hosted elsewhere, so that your organization can devote its resources to spreading the humanist message rather than supporting commercial Web hosting companies. We can explain to you how to move your files and ensure that your site visitors continue to find you. But we are especially interested in facilitating a Web presence for those organizations which are new to the online community or might not otherwise be able to own a website. Everyone wins when the humanist message is more accessible to the general public.

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What will our site name and e-mail address(es) look like? We offer two kinds of accounts.

  1. A subdomain on Humanists.net will have an address like
    http://yourgroup.humanists.net
    and any number of e-mail addresses of your choice like
    something@yourgroup.humanists.net
    A subdomain eliminates the need to purchase a domain name.
  2. A primary domain requires you to purchase a domain name (around $10/year) on one of the many commercial domain registrar sites. This transaction is handled by you or your group, but we will explain to you how to point the name to our server so that your site will be visible to the public at that name. Your Web address will be whatever name you purchased; for example
    http://www.yourgroup.org
    You can have an unlimited number of e-mail addresses like
    something@yourgroup.org

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Will Humanists.net create and maintain a website for us? No, the Humanists.net staff does not design or maintain websites for its hosted groups. We leave that to the organizations and their webmasters. However, we can be of informal assistance if you have specific technical or design questions about your site, and we may be able to connect you with a webmaster mentor who can work with you.

Other help is available in our webmaster resources section.

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What support is available to Humanists.net users? The Humanists.net staff is available by e-mail during normal business hours in the eastern United States (and by chance evenings and weekends) to help with e-mail and site problems or to answer general questions. Our staff is knowledgeable in HTML, design, and graphics as well as more sophisticated programming and database technologies such as CGI, PHP, and MySQL.

Our server company provides support to us when you have a problem that we cannot readily resolve.

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Who makes up the technical staff of Humanists.net? The Humanists.net staff consists of a dedicated humanist activist with a high level of commitment to the success of humanist Web initiatives:
Jessica Constantine - Systems administrator and web/database programmer

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What are the user's responsibilities? By accepting our hosting and/or e-mail program you agree to

  1. make a reasonable effort to keep your site attractive, functional, and up-to-date
  2. be listed as a link on our hosted sites opening page
  3. display our hosted sites logo as a link to our site
  4. use your mail account only for legitimate organizational or personal purposes which do not compromise our mission, but not for profit-making activities or spamming

The above requirements represent just a sampling of the more complete set of terms and conditions you will be asked to agree to prior to site creation.

Humanists.net and the Institute for Humanist Studies are not responsible for the content of any hosted site or for the activities of any e-mail account on our network. While we do try to accommodate all reasonable requests for Web hosting, the Institute for Humanist Studies reserves the right to refuse, limit, or withdraw these resources from a website at our sole discretion.

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What's in it for Humanists.net? Humanists.net and its parent organization, the Institute for Humanist Studies, are dedicated to

  • making information about humanism available to as many people as possible
  • supporting the global humanist community in a cooperative, innovative fashion.

By providing free Web hosting and e-mail, we make it possible for more humanist organizations and more content about humanism to be located online. We help humanist groups to communicate and operate more effectively. And we provide a network where humanist sites can project a more professional presence on the Web, without the distracting commercial advertisements and pop-ups that intrude in many other free hosting environments. It's as simple as that!

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How do we sign up? This information is provided in our webmaster resources section. Although anyone can contact us about becoming a Humanists.net user, it is your webmaster who will be communicating with us the most frequently.

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