The Clan Guide

1
The Clan Guide

• Your guide to building, running and being in a
  great clan

2
What is a Clan?

• A clan is a group of people who do the same thing
  for fun, generally a form of videogame or online
  game. They usually play as a team, and help
  other members. Clans are known for practically
  every online game in existence, from War Craft
  and Runescape to Mario Kart DS and Metroid Prime
  Hunters.
• Some clans also cover a variety of games, such as
  all the Nintendo DS wifi titles, or a variety of
  online Role Playing games.

3
What are the Clan Types?

• The main type of clan is the normal kind. These
  are often based at their own site or forums
  dedicated to the clan, have a decent amount of
  members when established and hold sign ups
  externally from larger gaming websites.There
  are also clans which are dedicated to a specific
  part of the game, like using one character, or
  one kart, or racing on one course. They are
  usually smaller, but can have a loyal fan
  base.Another type is a message board based
  clan. These are different in that they have no
  external website or forum, but base around a
  topic on a large gaming site's forums. These are
  generally very short lived and close after a few
  days.

4
How to make a clan

• To make a clan, you first need to decide what
  youre making a clan for. Basically, what game
  its about, what the requirements are, and how
  you expect it to be run.
• Qualifications/Requirements are a good thing to
  consider. On one hand, if you are making the
  Elite, top clan for the best players, then
  qualifications, generally strict are ideal.
  However, for most clans, they are not worth it,
  since clans without such rules generally get more
  popular in the end, seeing as more people can
  become members.
• The game is the most important thing, as the game
  covered, while popular, should also have few
  other clans for the game. While Runescape is
  popular, or Mario Kart, there are an enormous
  number of clans all for the same thing, and the
  shortage of members means that most are condemned
  to die after a few days. And another game, if
  you make the ONLY clan for it, will help your
  clan grow and become more popular.
• How you run it is a good point to think about.
  If the clan is run professionally, there should
  be less trouble, and more people bothering to
  join. However, if its run sloppily and badly
  overall, keep your expectations low.

5
The Clan website

• A good clan needs a good clan site. While forums
  are often used on their own, they are very tricky
  to make popular as they have no pre existing
  content of their own, and rely on member topics
  and posts for the information. Plus, many
  websites such as Raurus Return look down on forum
  websites as lazy, cheap and a very bad thing,
  hampering possible affiliation with bigger
  websites.
• Now, dont go and start using an online editor to
  make your site, or the schools local copy or
  Microsoft Publisher. A good site requires decent
  tools and a program like Dreamweaver is a good
  option for those who dont want to learn the best
  way.
• The best way though is good old HTML coding by
  hand in Notepad. Basically, learn the technique
  on sites such as http//htmldog.com and code the
  site yourself. You will have much more control
  than if you used an editor, and can add advanced
  things such as cursor styles, Javascript,
  advanced CSS and div positioning.
• Heres a quick reference for those who want to
  learn basic HTML. This list is in no means all
  you will need, but just the basic tags needed
• ltbgtBold Textlt/bgt
• ltigtItalicslt/igt
• ltugtUnderlinelt/ugt
• lta hrefgtHyperlinklt/agt
• ltpgtParagraph breaklt/pgt
• ltbr/gt Line break
• ltimg srcImage location/gtInsert an image
• ltformgtA formlt/formgt
• ltulgtltligtList choice 1lt/ligtltligtList choice
  2lt/ligtlt/ulgt Un ordered list
• ltolgtltligtChoice 1lt/ligtlt/olgt Ordered List

6
Hosting the Clan website

• Dont choose the likely options. Tripod,
  Geocities, Angelfire and Freewebs are not even
  that good, riddled with advertisements and have
  extremely limited space.
• Instead, you could choose one from this list, of
  reputable hosts which offer good services
• Awardspace
• Sitesled
• Funpic
• The above sites offer at least 100MB of space
  with no advertisements added to your pages. In
  fact, Funpic even offers 2500MB of space!
• Or, you could try a host which is just for fan
  sites. Yes, there is such a thing, so research
  it in Google..
• Or, you could try being hosted by a large site.
  Zelda Legends, Ganons Tower, Classic
  Gaming/Gamespy network, Toads Castle and Zelda
  Cavern all run hosting deals, generally better
  than what you can normally get for free. If you
  have a clan, you could go to my clan hosting
  forum on my message board and get a free forum or
  sub forum for your clan, where you would have
  full control.

7
Making a Good Forum

• First, do yourself a big favour, do not use
  Ezboard forums. They are not only useless, but
  get spammed with irrelevant information so often
  that unless you have a very good moderation team,
  your forums will look disorganised and be
  ignored.
• Also, do not use Bravenet forums. They arent
  even really forums, but basically a multi topic
  Guestbook, and since they dont allow moderators,
  or different topics and you can only post 250
  comments at a time, they will get really useless
  quickly.
• I recommend Invisionfree forums, or Proboards
  forums if you want to use some. Possibly also
  Yabb forums, and if you can get VB Bulletin
  Boards (very unlikely, the license is 80 per
  hour per board), then use them. I would not
  recommend PhpBB as the boards are known to be
  open to various kinds of hacking attempts.
• Appoint good moderators. Basically, you want
  them to be there all year around, and to be in
  various time zones.
• Get a shoutbox. Many people indeed like
  shoutboxes, and they cause many more people to
  join if you have one. The basic level is free
  from http//cbox.ws
• Cover multiple topics. The more you cover the
  better. However, dont cover too many, as it
  makes your forum look much more dead than it is.

8
Advertising a Good Clan

• Now, a clan with no members might as well not
  exist, as it is practically dead. So what you
  need are some loyal clan members to support your
  clan. So advertise! Use the below tips to
  advertise
• Submit your clan to Google. This is very simple,
  so just fill out the form at this link and Google
  should start indexing your site
• http//www.google.com/addurl/?continue/addurl
• Also, take part in many top sites and Clan
  directories to get more people knowing about your
  clan. For a good one, see the button on my
  sites home page, thats a listing of Nintendo DS
  sites and clans.
• Advertise when relevant on forums you go to.
  Also, put a bit of thought into your adverts.
• This wont get no members
• Please join my clan now at address
• This will
• The Clan name is the leading clan for various
  wifi games. We cover all the top games such as
  Mario kart DS, Metroid Prime Hunters, Animal
  Crossing, Lost Magic etc and we plan to cover
  Starfox Command and other such games in the
  future.
• Our clan is a growing community with member
  count and extremely friendly staff that will
  also help you. The clan address is clan
  address so please join and take part in one of
  the leading Wifi clans. Thank you.

9
Links

• Example Websites
• http//dsultimate.sitesled.com- My website
• HTML Sites
• http//htmldog.com
• http//htmlgoodies.com
• Forum sites
• http//invisionfree.com
• http//proboards.com
• Website Hosts (good)
• http//sitesled.com
• http//awardspace.com
• http//funpic.org
• Large Clans
• http//z13.invisionfree.com/Platinum_Crystals/
• http//z13.invisionfree.com/Blue_Diamond_Clan/

10
The End

• If you want to contact me, please speak to me in
  my old Advanced Strategies and Shortcuts Topic on
  Gamefaqs (so useful comments go in the new one).
  You could also send me a PM at my forums, or
  contact me through one of the many e-mail forms
  at my website. Thank you.
• I will also be happy to rate any clan and clan
  site that advertises, and also happy to host any
  clan that so far only operates on a message board
  at a large gaming site if the clan shows
  potential.
• Please also feel free to read my Crescent Moon
  Village PowerPoint Presentation at
• http//dsultimate.sitesled.com/Crescent20Moon20V
  illage.ppt
• Personal Phrases
• All games existed to be exploited