Post by S u N f r O s t ~ on Jun 25, 2016 22:23:29 GMT -5
Step Two: Getting Started
THE REAL BASICS
BECOMING KNOWN
After you have registered an account here, make sure to register on The Wire (TW) and Battlestone Downs (BSD) as well. As a member, you may wish to introduce yourself in the Discussion board on GHF or the General Board on TW so members can get to know you. Alternatively, you may wish to introduce yourself in the cbox instead! Our cbox is shared between GHF and TW and is paid for by the Incredibly Generous Kenren. In terms of the cbox, you are able to register a username so that you are not impersonated. Click on Profile in the bottom right, type a username and password and click enter. Now you are registered with the cbox!
CREATING YOUR STABLE
Before you start collecting horses, you should definitely create a stable first. This in itself may take a lot of time! Your stable site will become intricately associated with your barn. Members will end up memorizing your site's URL so they can simply type it and go stalk your horses at their leisure (I'm not kidding). Pick a barn name and then create your stable site on a web host that you desire. Members here typically use Weebly, Proboards or InvisionFree.
To create a Weebly site, go here. Weebly is by far the most popular option. Here are some examples of Weebly sites: here, here and here.
To create a Proboards site, go here. Nobody currently uses Proboards, though it used to be our most popular option. I still maintain a Proboards website - go visit it here.
To create an InvisionFree site, go here. Isabelle uses this host for her website; you can visit her barn here.
What host you use is completely up to you. When you have decided, go ahead and create your site. Design a layout and breathe some life into your barn! Once your stable site is up, go and post a link to it in the Stable Row board here on GHF. This way, we know that you exist and have an easy way to click a link and visit your barn!
THE MONETARY SYSTEM
Before moving on and acquiring horses, you will want to set up your bank account. Go to The Wire and navigate to the board labeled The Bank. Post a thread in there that is titled with your stable name. Every stable begins with $800,000. The full banking system, with graphics, is explained here.
It is good practice to keep up to date with your bank following each week of racing. I am notorious for being behind on my bank. Don't be me. Keep up with your bank XD
ACQUIRING HORSES
Congratulations, your stable site is up and you're ready to start filling your empty stalls! There are a variety of ways to do this - specifically, three ways: create, buy and lease.
CREATING
You can create a horse on GHF or TW. Navigate to the appropriate board on each side (it is labeled "Create" on GHF and "Creating Your Horse" on TW, located under The Market board). Each site has a thread up with a stats template to fill in. Before you progress, let me make it very clear that your stats format is up to you. For creating a horse, you must use an existing template, but after that you can do anything as long as the required information is presented. The required information is everything on the template. For examples of different stats formats, re-visit the sites used as sample sites above. Each has a unique format. If you like somebody else's stats format, though, please ask before using it!
Names of your horses cannot be famous names. This includes names of real horses, real people, movies, tv shows, names of characters/horses in movies/tv shows, etc.
In terms of pictures, please give credit on your pages to the photographer. Plagiarism is a no-no around here. In terms of picture resources, Cavallo and Ripley are two excellent picture hunters and would be happy to help you! It's very easy for a discussion in the cbox to turn into a picture hunt; never be afraid to ask for help!
Regardless of which site you create a horse on, I highly recommend reading the guide in the first reply to the GHF thread here. This will explain everything you need to know about what your created horse should look like! In the second reply to the thread is an excellent description of leg types; definitely worth-while reading!
Once you have posted your horse in the Create board, you must wait for them to be accepted by a staff member. Once accepted, create their page on your website and register your horse on GHF in the Registry board by filling out the form in the appropriate thread. A staff member will post the form for you in the board, assigning your horse a registration number. It is very important that you put this number on your horse's page as well as a link to their registration page in the registry. Without this, your horse cannot race.
BUYING AND LEASING
Your second/third option is to buy or lease a horse. Peruse the Buy and Sell board on GHF or the Market board on TW; horses for sale will be listed there. If you see a horse you like, reply to the thread with an offer or ask to buy the horse at the stated price. The owner will soon reply to you! If he or she decides to sell the horse to you, it will be up to you to create the horse's page on your website, post a link to that page in the thread and then head over to the Registry board to fill out a Change In Details form. This will let a staff member modify your new horse's registration with the new details. You would follow the same process for a lease, which gives you temporary ownership of the horse for the stated period.
Some owners may sell you a horse under contract. Make sure to read this contract and faithfully abide by the owner's wishes when buying or leasing the horse.
AN UNCONVENTIONAL OPTION - BEGGING/GETTING LUCKY
Sometimes, you might casually mention that you need a horse in the cbox while conversing with other members and get bombarded with people either to give you horses to buy or lease. These horses may not have even been listed as available! As a community, we are supportive of new members and are usually more than happy to help you out if you need more. Sometimes, however, horses may not be available, so definitely don't rely on this option. Creates will get you by just fine; it's where a lot of us started, and creating horses allows you to start your own lines!
MORE ABOUT THE REGISTRY - VERY IMPORTANT
The Registry is our way of keeping track of the horse population across all three sites. It is also an excellent way to look up the foals of a horse - simply type the horse's name in the Search option, and a bunch of threads will pop up that contain that name. These threads are probably the horse's registration thread and the registration threads of the horse's foals. Occasionally, some threads pop up that don't fit this criteria, so it never hurts to check!
As you gain in seniority, a staff member (me) will switch your member group to Active Member. This usually occurs after at least a month of consistent activity. Once this occurs, you are able to register and change details for your horses without the assistance of a staff member. To see what registry numbers are available or what the next number is in the sequence, make sure to take note of the bottom of the Register A Horse thread. If you are unsure of what number your horse should be registered as, just register the horse as you would before you achieved Active Member status; post a reply! Nobody will mind.
Every so often, the staff team will conduct a Registry Check. This occurs when the staff goes through every registration and makes sure no links are broken. The staff will post a thread with the results of the check in the Admin Updates board. Anything that needs to be changed will need to be changed as soon as is possible. The Registry Check also lets staff identify horses to be reclaimed from inactive members. Typically, inactive creates will be offered for sale and deleted if there are no buyers. The only exception is if the created horse is an established, very special horse to the member that is now inactive - in these cases, we often respect that and treat the create as a homebred.
A homebred is a horse that was bred by a player from their stock - at least one of their horses is a parent to the horse, or he or she instituted the breeding that brought that foal into the world. It is a universal rule that homebreds are never reclaimed unless a sire or dam of the homebred is owned by another player and was owned by that other player at the time of the breeding. If an inactive member wishes for their horses to remain untouched, this is respected; the only way for this to be circumvented is if the inactive member owns another member's homebreds.
Still with me? Continue on to Thread Number Three: Racing!
