User blog:Meadowwind5/To all New Users please READ

Hello, if you're reading this blog, you've took an interest in this wiki. Congrats!

Today I am going to teach you how to survive this wiki 'till you are at home here.

Important things you need to know
First, you NEED to read this. If you don't, it will cause a lot of problems; not just for you, but for all of us administrators who would like you to stay. I will post some of the most important rules here. Now that I have gone though some of the important rules and things you need to know about this wiki, I'll get to your new step.
 * To join a clan you need to ask the owner of the clan.
 * To make a clan, you should have a lot of role-play (RP) experience here. I recommend at least 2 weeks of active RP and 5 admin approvals. This is because in the past we have had new users come on, make clans, then never come back.
 * Be respectful of the admins. We worked hard to earn our place as admin. We are here to help you to this ponit.
 * DO NOT be a know it all. (Ex: "You need 3 admin approvals to make a clan." "I know,") It's not only annoying, but it's disrespectful.
 * Though we older users and admins are here to help you, you should spend sometime learning on your own. Asking questions on talk pages on how to do things. The younger admins (Me/Cinder) are the ones to ask for small things. This is because the older admins have helped a lot more new users than us, and if you get to be an admin, it will be your job too.

Joining a clan
The first thing you need to do is chose a clan.

On this wiki, there are many clans to chose from. The best place to look for a clan is the Clan list. Find a clan you think is interesting and click. You will be surprised at the clans you discover here.

When joining a clan, go click that button on the top of the page that says "talk". You might find examples such as

Can I join as:

''Blueberry: Blue she-cat with dark blue eyes. Deputy.''

Thinclaw: Black tom with white stripes and thin claws, yellow eyes.

Silverleaf: Sliver she-cat with silver eyes.

''Whitedawn: Blue she-cat with white underbelly and blue eyes. Blueberry's sister''

This is the format you should follow for join a clan. To get to the page to ask (called Talk), there is a botton next to Edit botton. It will have a number beside the talk showing how many times it was edited. Ask there.

When your done asking to join a clan put your signature, if this term is unfamilar to you it's FOUR tildes (~)s. This will get you your siggie (short for signature) and wait for the owner of the clan to respond.

Role-playing
I hope this is review, but if not, that's alright.

 Role-playing is located at the end of the page after Allegiances

When role-playing, you should read the whole role-play on the page, but if you're lazy like many people are, at least read the last five posts so you know what is going on in the in the roleplay.

To role-play, or should I say before you role-play, put in. At least four of the hyphens make a line like this:

Then you write your post, like this:

Rainbowstar snaped out of her dream and ran to Tanwyleaf's den. "Tawnyleaf, wake up, I have to tell you something."

When you are done, place your siggie at the bottom of your post so it will look like this:

Rainbowstar snaped out of her dream and ran to Tanwyleaf's den. "Tawnyleaf, wake up, I have to tell you something."

Doekit Talking is easy, it meaning something is hard  01:35, April 6, 2013 (UTC)

Administrators
One of the scariest, yet kindest things on a wiki are the admins. Admins are the heart and soul of a wiki. They have worked hard to earn their place, sometimes spending months of role-playing before they could even become a staff member.

All admins were at once chat moderators. That is one step higher then a normal user.

I'll give you a little about the admins around here, and about how they act around new users. Though overall, they are all friendly.

These are the admins most likely to be on here and help you.

Bold for oldest, italic for most helpful, Underlined for not always active

'''Cotton – Rather than by profile, I'll let what she does speak for herself, she's an active user on this wiki and one of my best friends. She will help you, but as she once said, we can only help you if you help yourself as well. We may be teachers but if you're on this wiki, you are old enough to do some things on your own. '''

'Me – Instead of telling you about me, I'll let the other admins do that in comments. :)'

Wist - Our Baby Admin! She's only been an admin for like a year while that seems like a long time it isn't really because of simple facts is that very few people RP anymore here, Me and Cotton inculded. But she's very enger to get Role-play going on here again. I reccomend asking her before asking me. For though I am very helpful, It's not on here as often as I once was. Wist Is a sweety and very kind!

Signatures (or siggies/sigs for short)
Alright, siggie time. Siggie is short for signature, you get this by typing in ~. Some users have formatted siggies that fit their personalities and others for quotes.

To format a siggie, if you don't know already, an example is down below. Fill in the [...]s with whatever is told to be put down there, and remove the brackets when you're done.

[What you wish to put here]

Now to make the siggie work you go to My preferences (click the link!) and under basic info, there will be signture part.

In there, paste your siggie into the custom signature spot, and right below it there will be a empty button that right beside it says 'I want to use wikitext in my signature'. Click it, then go to the bottom of the page and there will be a button that says save. Save it.

The try it out! If it doesn't work try it again.

For some of the more complex signatures that include shadows and boxes, it is recommended you make a page called User:[Your username]/Sig, and add your coding there.

Then, go to preferences and paste into the custom signature spot. Once again, check the box below that says "I want to use wikitext in my signature", and save it.

Story time
I am going to tell you a story. Feel free to skip it, but I feel as though you should know how us admins feel when you need us to help you with so much when we didn't get a lot of help when we were new users.

"I found this wiki around the time EarthClan was being role-played. It's a clan that is long gone from role-playing minds. I remember the beauty of watching people come together to do something they all loved. role-play and Warriors.

That summer I read every bit of role-play I could get my hands on. It was magic. In that fall, Cinderstar joined and quickly made SharpClan, MossClan, HawkClan, HeatherClan, and RushClan. I loved how quickly they would role-play and how new users came all the time. The wiki was active and beautiful, and it still is. Back then there was a different group of admins, and from what I've seen from that time, you had to do everything by yourself. Once you've joined, you've taught yourself on how to join a clan, find the clan, how to role-play, when to talk in chat, who was friendly, and who was mean. You did everything all by yourself.

I watched the wiki 'till the date I joined: January 21st, 2012. I joined around 3-4 days before Aspen left. I didn't know why– I didn't ask. When I joined you didn't ask such things for fear of ban. Maybe it was just me. But the day I joined, I vowed not to leave, not ever.

I did ask questions, and I chose a younger admin. Her name was Shortstar. If you really wanna know what went on, look at her page and mine. What we've worked over a year ago is still there, to this date.

Around March, a new user came, and her name was Eaglewater (but she soon changed her name to Eaglefur). She owned LifeClan. I never even hear of it being made. But sometimes admins did such things. We role-played 'till I saw her on chat. Up 'till that moment, I had never joined chat, because I was afrid of stalkers and stuff, and that fear keeps us all from giving out personal information. I joined and we start to RP.

In the month of May, the last day of the month, someone new came on. Her name was Cotton and little did I know, she would one day become one of my best friends. The day she joined, I had taken to a bit of going to each new users' talk page, welcoming them. I did the same with her, though it seemed at the time, she had more of a bond with Bird than me. At the time, I didn't like Bird. She seemed bland and boring.

The first thing I ever said to cotton besides the welcome was:

How did you get the green box on the page?

Cottonfur 19:53, May 31, 2012 (UTC)Cottonfur

 Ok for the green box you go to templates which is on the side bar of the edit thing.then you go to add other templates then to infoclan. Let your True colours show  19:57, May 31, 2012 (UTC)

Around an hour later, on chat while waiting for Eagle, Cotton came on and we chatted. I still remember the first PM I ever gave to Cotton. It was about Vi. Back then I was only a chat mod, but I was terrified of Vi– I'd seen what she could do to a new user and it scared me to death, thinking it could happen to me, but it kept me in line. The first PM I ever gave Cotton was...

 Don't be rude to Vi, she hates new users

She then said:

I wasn't planning on it.

And from that moment on, a friendship was made.

Now the months went by and I became an admin, followed by Cotton and Eagle, who was then nicknamed Eagie. A new user named Littleleaf joined, whom I nicknamed Leafeh. She became an admin and over that summer I remember role-playing and having fun and silliness, and everything was great.

After summer ended, nothing really changed. The wiki is like it is now.

New users will come, old users will go, but the thing that holds us all together is our love of Warriors, role-play and eachother. Thank you."

A final farewell
I hope you've enjoyed reading this blog as much as I have writing it. This blog is finished!

Doekit Talking is easy, it meaning something is hard  01:35, April 6, 2013 (UTC)

It will be updated or changed as times past, though I hope the message stays the same. This isn't my wiki, nor is it your wiki. It's our wiki- we all make it great and all who it is. If you're not planning to stay here for a long time, it's time that you shouldn't start. But before you decide, look over the role-play, read talk pages, and chat with people abut random stuff. This might be the one site that you know you can always come back too!

To end this Blog, I'd like to show this video.

 Goodbye!