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 "The
Clan Leader's Bible": (page#8) |
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| Get
a clan MESSAGE BOARD: |
Clan Message Boards are very
important:
One of the most important
tools for your clan is a free Message Board
or "forum". A message board allows
each and every member and also future members
to see what is happening around the clan. A
message board shows activity and is a visible
outside link to potential new recruits to
your clan. You should encourage members,
guests, and future members to post their
questions about the clan or game there. You
should encourage every one to read and HELP
others that ask for help there, just don't
give out CD keys ;-). Make sure that the only
people that are in or going to be in your
clan use your clan's message board, as other
"moocher clans" will try to "hang
out" on a more active clans message
board (and potentially steal recruits from
your clan, be disruptive, mooch resources
away, etc). Members, guests, or potential new
recruits should NOT post 'private questions
or problems' on your clan's open message
board. Personal problems should instead be
communicated by ICQed or email directly to a
Council Member to maintain candor and protect
the privacy of the troubled individual.
Message boards and fights
are NOT a good mix, usually things only get
worst (usually worst fairly quickly). If
someone is 'really mad' the best place is NOT
to post on the clan message board, suggest
that the 'hot headed individuals' take some
time (3 hours, 3 days, 3 weeks, or however
much time is needed) to coool off. Have
people that are arguing or fighting meet on
a private Roger Wilco channel and discuss
their differences in "private" with
a moderator. It looks REALLY BAD to see a
clan message board with a bunch of "I
hate his guts" messages. Fights do
happen, try to keep them low key and just
between the 2 people that started it. Don't
forget you can always KiCK ouT a troublemaker
if needed. It is very important to have GOOD
communication up and down and through out
your clan, this makes your clan message board
very valuable.
Occasionally your message
board might be spammed by a random net-mosquito,
to stop him or her, what you should do is ban
them by their ip number (or entire sub net if
needed), make sure the message board that you
sign up for allows you to ban troublemakers
from posting there. You might even want to
get a extra message board that you setup to
be 'password-needed-to-post' and only give
out the password to members, guest, etc. You
will need at least (1) board to be 'open',
however, so potential new recruits can see
that your clan is active and alive and
thriving as evident by it's message board
traffic.
GET A GOOD message
board:
We can recommend
that you get your clan a FREE message board
at
EZboard.com or
Bravenet.com . They are pretty stable and
reliable as far as FREE message board
companies go. Since we have been running the
[TiC]Clan, (3) major free message board
companies have died (www.broadhost.com, www.inside-the-web.com,
and www.coolboard.com), all had been good
board companies.
There are plenty of other
free message board companies, see our LINKs page
for the other message board companies.
When you sign up for your
message board, TRY to use a "USER LOGIN
NAME" or "USER ID" of your
actual clan's name (example "youngwarriors"
or youngwarriorsclan").
When you get your board make sure you use ALL "lower
case" letters in your "USER ID"
("USER LOGIN NAME") when you sign
up for the account (it matters at some places), so that your URL web
address (to your site), will be a simple easy
to find address http://members3.boardhost.com/youngwarriors/ (example "youngwarriors",
instead of "YoungWARRIORS").
There are many different
features offered by the various free message
board companies. "EASE OF USE" and
"RELIABILITY" are your top
priorities in selecting a message board for
your clan. If a free message board is always
off line, who cares what it looks like.
Typical Message
Board Features:
- Banning spammers by
their IP#.
- Password-able boards.
- Registering before
posting.
- Pre-approval of
messages before display.
- Ability to have one or
more moderators.
- The ability to add
links back to your home page.
- The ability to change
the pages' or fonts' colors, sizes,
look, etc.
- The ability to easily
delete spam messages.
- RELIABILITY (does the
FREE board actually work?).
- Easy of use, is it
hard to add new messages ?
- There are many more
features, to see a complete list of
FREE message board companies go to
our LINKs page.
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Text
chat: "Instant Messengers", IRC text channels,
Game Email:
Message boards or forums are "static", you
type a message and post it, then when people read the board
an hour or day later, they post a response. With email, you
type a message and email it. Anywhere from 1-25 minutes later
the email will have been shuffled threw internet to
the person, then the recipient
reads your email (when they check their email), they respond
with an email, etc. As there is a delay, conversation can
take days to complete.
"Text chat" is instantaneous. You type something, they
read it immediately (if they have it turned on) and type a response back, you read
and respond,
etc, etc.
There are several versions of FREE "text
chat" software programs out there that your clan members
could use to communicate with others inside and outside your clan. You could use one of
the "instant
messenger" style programs like
ICQ,
AIM,
Windows
Messenger instant chat (text chat that is like instant
email) for small clan classes and clan discussions if
needed. Btw, most of the modern style clans use Roger
Wilco or some type of voice software for this instead. Most
gaming clubs use ICQ -and- Roger Wilco both, as they
compliment one another. However, since "Windows Messenger"
comes with Windows, this is quickly growing in popularity
amongst clans.
If you compete in most of the current
leagues, they usually require you to get an IRC "text
chat channel" (even if you already have a voice chat
channel or an instant messenger program) to communicate between
your clan and the other clan before a match. IRC is very
popular amongst clans because of this. There is free client and server
software available for IRC. Some games and gaming related
software have a limited IRC chat capability build into it
(Half-life, GameSpy). If you want to get a free
multi-feature IRC program, a lot of people use the IRC
client software called
mIRC ,
its FREE. You can get a FREE IRC text chat channel
hosted at
Gamesnet.net . If you have questions or need help you
can get tips, help, and more info on IRC at
ircHelp.org or at
mIRC site
or
Gamesnet.net . IRC is only needed if you get into
leagues, other wise save your time and just use voice
communications. There are a lot of people that still use the
old IRC, and thus it would help you as a limited
recruitment tool.
The are several FREE web based email
services:
Hotmail,
Yahoo Mail. There is also
Bigfoot that is a
free email redirector service. You could get an email address
like
ticclan@bigfoot.com. This serves to hide your real email
address from spam bots as you communicate with people
posting it on web pages and in forums, etc. Also you and
your members could get each get a
"yourclan_yourgamename@yahoo.com" or at Hotmail. The reason
why you might need this is when your clan gets bigger,
instead of getting emails from "tomjefferies@ispnet.net", you
will know that it's "[TiC]darkforce" who just sent you the
email, because his game email would be "tic_darkforce@hotmail.com". You would know that the guy that
sent you that email was in your clan and who he was.
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"The Clan Leader's Bible"
pages: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14
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