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  • Subject: Dmk’s Guide to Making a Good Chapter
Subject: Dmk’s Guide to Making a Good Chapter
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Dmk’s Guide to Making a Good Chapter (Group)

A Beginner's Guide to 7th Column Groups

Okay, It doesn’t matter if you are a first time user or a 7th Column veteran on bungie.net 7th Column user but there is a Few things you need to know to take the full advantage of making a chapter.

A Few Things

Group: The expression “group” or “Chapter” refers a member controlled micro-site inside Bungie.net - whichever a "Chapter" or a "Clan". Presently these two types of groups offer the same functionality but over time each will have restrained differences. The 7th Column is made up of thousands of user-made groups, each with their own unique content about 2,000. Each group has its own news, forums, resources and membership rules. Members can do various things within your group based on their authorization level, which is set by a group administrator.

Chapter: A chapter is a type of group that's not a clan. In most cases, chapters are casual hangouts for people looking to set up LAN parties, discuss comparable interests, etc.. A chapter is not tied directly to Halo 2 on Xbox Live but can center around just about anything else.

Clan: A Clan is also a type of group; however, a Clan is strictly created to tie into a user created Clan within Halo 2 on Xbox Live.

Resources: At the compassion of a group are its resources (formerly referred to as Databases). These are permanent data archives that live within each group and are meant to store important content and information. Each group starts out with 5 general resources: Guest Book, Contact Info, FAQs, Links, and Articles. Each of these primary resources can hold up to 250 rows of data. Each group can also create up to 25 custom resources. A custom resource can be used for anything you like and will hold up to 6 columns and 100 rows of data. You identify the fields for your resource when it is created.

Security Role: Every member of a group is assigned a particular security role which determines what they can and can't do inside your group. There are initially 4 basic roles: Nonmember, Member, Administrator and Forum Moderator. You can edit the specific permissions of each of these roles in addition to creating some brand new custom ones. Each group can have up to 15 different roles.

Themes (Skins): In order to allow groups to enhanced show off their unique personalities, a series of skins are available to alter the default look and feel of the group's pages. For more info on creating a theme for the 7th Column, visit the Themes page.

Founder: This refers to the Bungie.net member who formerly creates a group.

Creating A Group

Creating a group is simple and anyone who has a Bungie.net account can create their own group. Before you create a new group, please take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with the 7th Column and the rules and policies of Bungie.net.
Step 1 : Read The Bungie’s T and C

Creating a group:
Before creating a group, you should familiarize yourself with the 7th Column. Basically, the 7th Column is made up of fan run groups that usually represent collections of players that are local to each other (although there are exceptions). Inappropriate names, mottos, or descriptions are not allowed - don't violate the code of conduct! Also remember the 7th Column is not for your Quake clan, it is for Bungie gamers. Please note that you cannot create a group until your account has been active for at least 14 days


Step 2 : Personalize It

Once you click the "I Agree" button you'll be taken to the group creation page. Once here, you will be asked to enter as much or as little information as you like that will ultimately describe who and what your group is.
* Group Name: (required) what do you want to call your new group? This is a required field and can be up to 24 characters and must be a unique name.
* Membership Requires Approval: Do you want your group to be open for anyone to join or do you want to control who can and can't become a member?
* Group Motto: (required) what’s your motto? You have 255 characters to establish the motto for your new group.
* Group Description: (required) this is your chance to describe your group to others. What's your group all about? What do you want visitors and potential members to know about your group?
* Group HQ City: (optional) Where is your base of operations? (50 character max)
* Group HQ State/Provence: (optional) More detail about where you are located. (up to 50 characters)
* Group HQ Country: (optional) What country are you in? (50 character max)
* Group HQ Zip Code: (optional) What Zip are you located in? (10 character max)
Step 3: Create Group!
Once you've filled in all the information, click on "Create Group" and you're ready to rock.

  • 09.14.2006 8:08 AM PDT
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Is Your Group Home Blank And Boring

Now that you've got your own brand new group, it looks a bit blank let's take a closer look at your group's home page. The first thing you'll notice is the big graphic header at the top of the page. primarily you'll have the default theme, but later on you'll be able to choose from other themes to skin your page and make it look different.
Right below the header is the main navigation bar for your group. From here you can access all the various pieces and content within your group. There are four main sections, each with a few subsections. They are:
* Home: This is your main page. The subpages underneath home are News, Search News, Group Settings and Admin Tools (more on these below).
* Forum: Your own personal forum for your group. There are no submenu options.
* Resources: This is your group's collection of content databases. From the sub menu you can jump straight to your Guest Book, Contact Info, FAQ or Links resources. Click on Custom to go to an index of your custom resources.
* Members: This tab takes you to your membership management screen (more on this below).
Below the main nav bar is some general information about your group. All of the personal stuff you entered back when you create the group is displayed here - description, motto, founders, location, etc..
The rest of the page consists of your group's news - broken up into "Announcements" and "News".

News???

The group news system will be one of the most important, it means of staying in contact with your members. Just like we post news to the front page of Bungie.net, you and your group members can post news stories on your group front page for others to read. Administrators of a group can determine who can post news and each story can be set to be viewable by specific groups of people.
The "Announcements" area is for displaying special important news headlines. When you create a news post, you can flag your story as a "Memoranda", "Declaration" or "Directive." These special categories are for more important headlines thus the special treatment on the front page.
Below the annoucement area is the "regular" news. Just like on the Bungie.net front page, you'll see the headline, the author, the time it was posted and a summary blurb from the story. Clicking on the headline or on the "continues" link will allow you to read the story in its entirity.
Submitting news is as easy as clicking the "submit news" button on your group's front page. The submit news page will prompt you for the title, the summary text, the full story, etc.. - just like when you submit a story to the Bungie.net front page. You can even choose to have your story cross-posted to your forum for discussion. When news is submitted, it will either appear directly on the front page (if the submitter has permission) or it will appear in the approval queue.

Setting and Tools

* Anyone with adequate privileges can go back and make changes to the basic elements of a group by clicking on the "Group Settings" link. Here you can change your quick linkname, edit your membership rules, change your skin/theme, and update your motto and more.

* Members with sufficient priveleges can also access the group's Admin Tools. There are several main tools that empower group staff to manage and moderate the activity within their group.
* News Queue: Anyone who doesn't have permission to post news directly to the front page will post their news to the approval queue. From here you can reject or approve any submitted news stories.
* Blacklist Management: Is someone annoying you or spamming your group? Blacklist them! A blacklisted user is essentially blocked from interacting with your group in any way.
* Security Role Editor: Everyone who is a member of your group is assigned a security role. The security role determines what "power" they have in your group - can they post news? Change your settings? Approve new members? All of these things can be customized by you and you can even create your own security roles complete with your own custom names.
* Member Management: This page shows a listing of all your current members and gives you the ability to edit their security role, kick them from the group or blacklist them.
Resources

A group's resources are permanent databases for members to create and store content in. A member may or may not be able to create a new resource or edit and existing one depending on the security role they have been assigned. Viewing privileges can also be set to each individual entry into a resource. Beyond the core 5 resources, groups can have up to 25 custom resources to hold whatever content you wish. Clicking on the "custom" link in the Resources subnav bar will bring you to a list of all your existing custom resources. A custom resource can be up to 6 columns wide, though please note that the site itself doesn't have much width to work with. As such, using 6 column resources with lots of data will result in a less than ideal layout as text is forced to wrap. Ideally you should keep your resource text short and sweet or when longer content is called for, limit the amount of columns to 4 or less.
Adverting
* By using Classifieds!
* Sending chapter invites to everyone via personal messages
This has pretty much the same effect as advertising, an in it's essence, is pretty much the same thing. Chapter invites pretty much are the equivelance of e-mail spam. If you have to ask people to join your chapter, you probably don't got much going on. People can sense this.
* Claiming to have "exclusive material" when it's not
This may not be as big now, but it was a while ago. If you claim to have "special Halo info" or other things that are supposedly exclusive to your chapter, you had better be right!
* Making you chapter sound better than it is
It is better for a person to come to your chapter with low expectations, than to go with high expectations and be let down.
* Making tons of databases
Overdoing it never helped anyone. I have been to chapters that have 25 different databases going. Although it may seem like they have "alot to offer", it ends up being too much! Half of the databases fail due to lack of maintenance, and many of the good ones get overlooked. Find a couple cool ideas, and stick to those. If they do really well, maybe add on a couple more. The more you have, the easier it is to get confused and lost in your chapter!

I hope you liked it that taken me a week to write

  • 09.14.2006 8:09 AM PDT
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Location: Outlaws' Summit.

Yeah, I liked it and I commend you for your efforts....but there's already one of these in The Septagon stickies.

Regardless, good work if you did all of that on your own. Props.

  • 09.14.2006 8:31 AM PDT

"You're never gonna fight me, I'll wipe the world away"

Didnt the last time you made this thread it got locked?

  • 09.14.2006 8:46 AM PDT

-Quaere verum.

Got a report? Use the report tool or send a pm.
Chairleg Productions presents: 'Console Wars' and 'Games as Art?' (also on Halo Waypoint).

I guess it could come in handy to 7th Column new comers and it's was a pretty nice write up. To be honest though, most of the beginning information can found in the 7th column pages.

Also, i agree that PM advertising is a bad idea. While this may work, many many people have voiced their hate of receiving PM advertisements for chapters/groups so i would really not recommend it.

I think that main points are to keep your chapter/group going by means of regular content (forum thread, resource entries etc) so that members will remain active. Also try to be original with your chapter. Ok, so your chapter's for fans of Spartans from the Halo series? Not good enough. There are hundreds of these chapters, so make sure your chapter is not one of these clones.

[Edited on 9/14/2006]

  • 09.14.2006 8:57 AM PDT
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"Whatever exists, whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent. These anonymous creatures may seem little or nothing in the world. Yet the smallest crumb can devour us. Any smallest thing beneath yon rock out of men's knowing. Only nature can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he be properly suzerain of the earth."

This guide is very...basic...for lack of a better word at the moment. There's detail where it isn't needed, and no detail where it is needed.

The "Few Things" isn't really needed. If you want to go into a bit more detail about groups, and you would really need to do is explain what a group/chapter is. Going into detail about clans and resources is not needed, since they either have nothing to do with the process, or are pointless at the time when they are being read.

It might be important to tell members how they can create their own group. By that I mean where they go to create it. But that's all semantics. It isn't necessarily needed.

Most of the "Personalize" section is unimportant. What really needs to be done is to give actual tips on what should be done for a good group, rather than what must be done to complete the bare minimum. See the other chapter creation guide (in the Septagon Stickies thread) for more detail. The optional things can be omitted since they are painfully obvious.

You may want to expand on the "Settings and Tools" section a bit more. Once again, it's your choice. I also think that last point about too many resources should go in the "Resources" section, rather than "Advertising."

As GP mentioned, you might want to add in a bit more detail on making a good chapter. Right now, as I see it, this is more of a "What is a chapter?/How to make a chapter" guide than a "How to make a good chapter" guide. You need to expand more on what should and should not be done to make a chapter that will be somewhat successful group. Personally, it might be best to also recommend the user search first for a group that fits their liking before creating one, since as we all know (and GP hinted towards) is that a lot of groups also fail because they're nothing but clones of other, more successful chapters.

  • 09.14.2006 10:23 AM PDT
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Read about the Forgotten Spartan I Program
Butane: To protect the world from devastation!
sir_brilliant: To unite all people within our nation!
Rainman89: To denounce the evils of truth and love!
sir_brilliant: To extend out reach to the stars above!
SpaceGhostFlyer: Jessie!
Butane: James!
sir_brilliant: Team Rocket blasting off at the speed of light
Butane: Surrender now or prepare to fight
sir_brilliant: Meowth, that's right!

You already got this same thread locked once, why are you trying again?

  • 09.14.2006 11:54 AM PDT

El Burninator's a tool.

I C icemanassasin way too often -.-

  • 09.14.2006 2:25 PM PDT
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Posted by: Rainman89
You already got this same thread locked once, why are you trying again?


Ya it did, I guess people just have to be told multiple times, or a couple times with a hint of force.

  • 09.14.2006 4:11 PM PDT

I hate everything, but it's not my fault.

Not only did you post this 10 days ago, you stole this from mrsmiley.

  • 09.14.2006 4:18 PM PDT