Home-Barista.com - Agreement - Part I

A major goal of HB is keeping the discussion focused on espresso, the barista, and coffee—topics that are consistent with the site motto "Your guide to exceptional espresso." Please review these guidelines as they constitute a part of the site's terms of service:

  • Be respectful. Treat others as you would have them treat you.

  • Be patient. Everyone is at different points in their learning.

  • Stay on topic. Many other avenues exist for non-coffee discussions.

  • Be open and honest. Many people rely on opinions presented in these forums as part of their purchase decision. The source of the information you present and basis of the opinions you express are as important at the statements themselves. For example, you should make it clear whether you speak from first hand experience, what you read elsewhere (and if appropriate, link to the source), or conventional wisdom.

  • Encourage positive, shared discourse. Be mindful of participant reactions and consider the tone of your replies; ideally they should encourage positive discourse. Conversely, don't be disruptive by dominating the conversation. Dogmatic or repetitive replies are rarely welcome.

  • Accept the moderators' decisions. They are volunteers who want to share their knowledge and guide the discussion.

  • Help raise the discussion level. Use the how tos, resources, FAQs, and search. "Newbie" questions are welcome, but they are more likely to receive thoughtful replies if some initial research is done beforehand.

  • Avoid cross-posting. Many of our members frequent multiple coffee sites. Please avoid cross-posting your question, or mention the other site(s) with referral link(s) to avoid repetitive responses.

  • No promotions. Got a new business, blog, social media channel, or survey? Great! But please, do not promote it here. Such posts may be treated as spam and result in your account being banned.

See the site's Guidelines for productive discussion and Guidelines for vendor participation for more details. Note that while not explicitly stated, these guidelines include typical online forum rules like "No personal attacks" and "No commercial posts."

Home-Barista.com - Agreement - Part II

This policy explains in detail how “Home-Barista.com” along with its affiliated companies (hereinafter “we”, “us”, “our”, “Home-Barista.com”, “https://www.home-barista.com/forums”) and phpBB (hereinafter “they”, “them”, “their”, “phpBB software”, “www.phpbb.com”, “phpBB Limited”, “phpBB Teams”) use any information collected during any session of usage by you (hereinafter “your information”).

Your information is collected via two ways. Firstly, by browsing “Home-Barista.com” will cause the phpBB software to create a number of cookies, which are small text files that are downloaded on to your computer’s web browser temporary files. The first two cookies just contain a user identifier (hereinafter “user-id”) and an anonymous session identifier (hereinafter “session-id”), automatically assigned to you by the phpBB software. A third cookie will be created once you have browsed topics within “Home-Barista.com” and is used to store which topics have been read, thereby improving your user experience.

We may also create cookies external to the phpBB software whilst browsing “Home-Barista.com”, though these are outside the scope of this document which is intended to only cover the pages created by the phpBB software. The second way in which we collect your information is by what you submit to us. This can be, and is not limited to: posting as an anonymous user (hereinafter “anonymous posts”), registering on “Home-Barista.com” (hereinafter “your account”) and posts submitted by you after registration and whilst logged in (hereinafter “your posts”).

Your account will at a bare minimum contain a uniquely identifiable name (hereinafter “your user name”), a personal password used for logging into your account (hereinafter “your password”) and a personal, valid email address (hereinafter “your email”). Your information for your account at “Home-Barista.com” is protected by data-protection laws applicable in the country that hosts us. Any information beyond your user name, your password, and your email address required by “Home-Barista.com” during the registration process is either mandatory or optional, at the discretion of “Home-Barista.com”. In all cases, you have the option of what information in your account is publicly displayed. Furthermore, within your account, you have the option to opt-in or opt-out of automatically generated emails from the phpBB software.

Your password is ciphered (a one-way hash) so that it is secure. However, it is recommended that you do not reuse the same password across a number of different websites. Your password is the means of accessing your account at “Home-Barista.com”, so please guard it carefully and under no circumstance will anyone affiliated with “Home-Barista.com”, phpBB or another 3rd party, legitimately ask you for your password. Should you forget your password for your account, you can use the “I forgot my password” feature provided by the phpBB software. This process will ask you to submit your user name and your email, then the phpBB software will generate a new password to reclaim your account.

Home-Barista.com - General Data Protection Regulation - Part III

To comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), you need to be made aware that your Home-Barista.com account will, at a bare minimum, contain a uniquely identifiable name (hereinafter "your user name"), a personal password used for logging into your account (hereinafter "your password") and a personal, valid email address (hereinafter "your email"). Your information for your account at Home-Barista.com is protected by data-protection laws applicable in the country that hosts us. Any information beyond your user name, your password, and your email address required by Home-Barista.com during the registration process is either mandatory or optional, at the discretion of Home-Barista.com. In all cases, you have the option of what information in your account is publicly displayed. Furthermore, within your account, you have the option to opt-in or opt-out of automatically generated emails.

Furthermore, we will store all of the IP addresses that you use to post with. Depending on your preferences, Home-Barista.com may send you emails to the email address that Home-Barista.com holds in your account, which will either be that you used when you registered or one that you have subsequently changed, but you are able to change these preferences from your User Control Panel (UCP) at any time should you wish to stop receiving them.

The personal details that you gave us when you signed up, or added later, will be used solely for the purposes of Home-Barista.com board functionality. They will not be used for anything else and neither will they be passed on to any third party without your explicit consent. You can check, at any time, the personal details Home-Barista.com is holding about you from your UCP.

The only other information about you is that which you decide to post in the forums, whereupon it is considered to be "publicly available" as it will have been indexed by search engines as well as online archive sites.

Home-Barista.com - Cookies - Part VI

How do we use cookies on this board?
We use files known as cookies on Home-Barista.com to improve its performance and to enhance your user experience. By using Home-Barista.com, you agree that we can place these types of files on your device.

What are cookies?
Cookies are small text files that a website may put on your computer, or mobile device, when you first visit that site or one of its pages.

There are many functions that a cookie can serve. For example, a cookie will help the website, or another website, to recognize your device the next time you visit it. Home-Barista.com uses the term "cookies" in this policy to refer to all files that collect information in this way.

Certain cookies contain personal information – for example, if you click on "remember me" when logging on, a cookie will store your username. Most cookies will not collect information that identifies you, but will instead collect more general information such as how users arrive at and use Home-Barista.com, or a user's general location.

What sort of cookies does Home-Barista.com use? Cookies can perform several different functions:

  • Necessary Cookies: Some cookies are essential for the operation of Home-Barista.com. These cookies enable services you have specifically asked for.
  • Performance Cookies: These cookies may collect anonymous information on the pages visited. For example, we might use performance cookies to keep track of which pages are most popular, which method of linking between pages is most effective, and to determine why some pages are receiving error messages.
  • Functionality Cookies: These cookies remember choices you make to improve your experience.

Home-Barista.com may also allow third parties to serve cookies that fall into any of the categories above. For example, like many sites, we use Google Analytics to help us monitor our website traffic, Cloudflare to boost performance, and Google AdWords to display ads that generate revenue in support of the site.

Can a board user block cookies? To find out how to manage which cookies you allow, see your browser's help section or your mobile device manual - or you can visit one of the sites below, which have detailed information on how to manage, control or delete cookies.

www.aboutcookies.org
www.allaboutcookies.org

Please remember that if you do choose to disable cookies, you may find that certain sections of Home-Barista.com do not work properly.

Cookies on Home-Barista.com from social networking sites
Home-Barista.com may have links to social networking websites (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube). These websites may also place cookies on your device and Home-Barista.com does not control how they use their cookies, therefore Home-Barista.com suggests you check their website(s) to see how they are using cookies.