1. Read the policy page carefully. Read the little "Details" pages.

2. Send email to my Green Internet Society address. Tell me in a few lines about your local, your campaign, or your project. Send me a message in your own words stating that you understand and agree to the Acceptable Use Policy shown at http://www.greens.org/about/policy.html. Include your real name, postal address and phone number. If you are joining a team, put to the other team members' addresses in your Cc: line. If you represent a group, put its leaders in your Cc: line. If you are relieving an existing user, put that person's address in your Cc: line.

   If you are familiar with Secure Shell, create a new key pair and include the public key. If not, I'll send you a password as described above.

3. While you are waiting to hear back from me, please obtain and install a secure internet communications package that provides Secure Shell. This will protect your password from spyware running on your network neighbors' virus-infected PCs, and allow you to upload files. We don't offer FTP access. Secure Shell has a replacement for FTP that works better, SFTP. Your commercial FTP program probably has SFTP, but you should get a trustworthy free SFTP program too.

   Microsoft Windows users

   If your FTP program does not have SSH2 or “SFTP” please get Filezilla Client and/or WinSCP. They're free (as in freedom), so try both.

   If you will be creating email addresses and scripts or editing your HTML in place on the server, please get PuTTY.

   MacOS (before Mac OS X) users

   Please get MacSFTP and MacSSH and/or NiftyTelnet SSH (instructions at JHU, local copy)

   Mac OS X users

   Please get Filezilla, "the free FTP solution", or Fugu, a graphical front-end to SFTP and SSH.

   unix (including Linux, Mac OS X, and xBSD) users

   read this.

   There are many other Secure Shell client programs for Microsoft Windows, MacOS, or unix at The Free Country. You can use any one that works in your environment.

   Mail me if you can't get Secure Shell working.

4. If you want your own domain name, look here.

5. Please read http://www.greens.org/about/hosts.html Follow the links to rachel and software.

6. Do not donate money until you are using your account. Donations are voluntary and will not affect your service.

You should immediately test your shell and Secure Copy or FTP. Then you should join the GIS announcements mailing list.