EDIT: 6/10/2018 Once I'm done testing the Literature Features I will be adding a section on that ALSO PLEASE LET ME KNOW IN A COMMENT IF YOU'D LIKE THIS GUIDE TO COME WITH PICTURES, IT WOULD BE A BIT OF A PROJECT BUT IM WILLING TO ADD PICTURES IF IT HELPS PEOPLE~
I see a lot of threads of newcomers asking for help or just saying hi so I figured a small guide/introduction thread to get some people started could help reduce a bit of forum clutter~ feel free to ask questions or make suggestions on what to add to this introduction. ^u^/ This post will be edited as I see fit, thanks for understanding and I hope this helps some of you new peeps!
So first off, welcome! Glad to see you here with us!
The purpose of this thread is to explain and help guide people through Toyhouse and some of its functions and settings and also to give people a place to introduce themselves! A lot of this is info you can easily figure out when you begin to really use Toyhouse, and a lot of people already know most of these things, this is more of a guide for people just joining.
Toyhouse is a wonderful place for storing characters, all of their art and much more so enjoy my long winded introduction to some of those features! Feel free to ask questions or for help or even introduce yourself here! Be sure you check up on Toyhouse's TOS and FAQ for things I may have not addressed here! And welcome to Toyhouse! :D
Basics!
To begin with some basics, submitting a new character is simple! In the top black bar of the site you'll see a +Submit drop down option, this will bring up: New Character, New Bulletin, & New World! Characters should only be submitted if they are your own- created, purchased, or gifted to you! The New Bulletin option will bring you to a blank Bulletin, think of this as a Journal or Notepad! A World as seen HERE, can be used for a variety of things! You can creat Bulletins, Forums, Submit Characters, and let other people join your world! You can even make these Worlds Public or Private, meaning either everyone can see everything or only members can see! Worlds right now are typically used for group Rps, one on one Rps, or communities for Closed Speices.
Forums & Threads!
Here you can also find useful forums for General, Commerce, Creative, and Ungrouped! I will also explain the Tools section at the very bottom of the side-bar!
When you create a thread in any forum a new feature just added was a poll! As of right now it doesn't look like you can edit it after created, so use this feature wisely! You can also lock your thread, meaning it will still be visible but you cannot post anymore, you can only delete the thread after this option is selected, so be sure you're done with the thread as there is no un-doing this!
Another new feature is your bump button in your thread, found at the top right of your thread, please note you can only bump once every thirty minutes.
The General Forum has two sub-forums, Forum Games and General! Forum games is home to any and all forum games! What are forum games? Well they're exactly what they sound like! Its a game hosted and participated in by all users! There are many games here including one of our sites most popular types, the Draw for the person above you thread! This forum game is for people who would like to draw for others and get random pieces of art in return! Please check all info in your forum games before participating as some do come with rules to keep the games fair and ongoing!
The General sub-forum in the General forums is for any random threads you feel have no place! Many people go to post site questions, surveys, ect!
Moving into the fastest moving forum, Commerce! Here you will find Adoption Center, Design Marketplace, Art Marketplace, and Service Reviews!
Lets start with the Adoption Center! This is a thread for trading and selling exsisting designs, purge threads, or seeking threads. This is a good place to go if you're looking to get yourself some new Ocs! You'll find all types of resells, trades, and swaps here!
The Design Marketplace is a good sub-forum for character auctions, raffles, and the general selling of brand new adopts from many different artists!
Are you looking for some art of your characters? Then Art Marketplace is the forum to hop to! Here you can find people advertising their commissions or people seeking commissions! Its also gome to art trades and such! You can offer money for commissions or even post characters in exchange for art here.
This next sub-forum is something I personally am super excited for and to talk about: Service Reviews. I recommend giving this thread a look every now and then especially if you are a frequent buyer of art or adopts, this thread is for your protection! Its home to PSA's an important part of our community, PSA's are made so that an unsavory behavior and scam artists can be avoided. But this sub-forum isn't just home to the negatives, its also got Positive Service Reveiws, where good customer service is brought to everyones attention. So if you are looking for a plesant experience ordering art, or just looking to stear clear of the unfortunate scam artists this sub-forum is looking out for you!
Lets move onto Creative, where you have Character Discussion, Worlds, HTML/CSS & Graphics, and Species Discussion. Charatcer Discussion is a good place to show off your characters and see others characters, share those beautiful ocs here! The Worlds sub-forum is a place for you to put those Ocs to use, here you will find people looking for Rps, Headcanons, or World Building. Html/CSS & Graphics is a good place to find profile layouts and character templates, if you're looking to dress up your profile or your characters profiles, this is where you'll go to find some help. And last but not least in our Creative section, Species Discussion! Let me start off by saying this topic can get heated fast, so lets all keep it civil and not attack anyone here? This thread is for open discussion on Species, Open or Closed; its also home to interests check for new species, so if you want to see something new in the species of oc's, this is the place to be!
And last but definitly not least we'll take a quick look at the Ungrouped Forum, this forum is home to Suggestions & Bugs, and the Announcments subforums. The Suggestions & Bugs sub-forum is a good place to go if you want to see something new from toyhouse- or just want to suggest a change in an exsisting feature- but before making suggestions please be sure to check the To-Do list here: [READ] To-Do List, this thread will give you a heads up before you make any suggestions that the site mods are already thinking of implementing, and in my opinion they have kept this thread updated very well. And finally, our Announcements sub-forum has all the info from the site mods about updates to the site and its features, there will always be an announcement posted to the front page if the site is going to go down for maintinance but it will lead you hear with any info regarding times and dates.
Now I'd like to take another moment to discuss the new side bar we have to the left of the forums and the Tools section down at the bottom. In the Tools section you can find Recent Activity, Subscriptions, My Threads, and My Posts- this is a new super helpful feature for users so that we don't loose our threads anymore, so if you think you've gone and lost your thread go take a peek at My Threads, or if you made a post somewhere important and cant remember where- say a forum game thread or such click o that My Post thread and find it!
Wow thats a lot of Forum information! Lets move onto some other general information!
Settings Menu & Sub-menues
Toyhouse has a Private messaging feature! Under your username in the top right hand corner of the screen there is a drop box that will come down to reveal Inbox, bingo there you go!
There is also a Settings option, in the Settings option you can find a helpful options such as Account, Profile, Invitations, ect listed on the right hand side of your screen.
The account setting will let you change your password or avatar image. And will now let you change your username! But please know that if you change your username as of right now anyone can pick up your old one!
Another new feature brought in our last update was the ability to apply a color theme to the site, this can be found in your Display Settings in your settings menues!
Watermarks!
Watermarks is a wonderful feature Toyhouse profives! While uploading a character you may notice the settings Authorized Veiwers, Publics Veiwers, Watermark & NSFW feature- the Watermarks Feater will place either Toyhouse's default Watermark over any images uploaded, or your own personal one- this is where you upload the watermark, in the settings menu. I would suggest creating yourself a personal Watermark to place over any uploaded images so that nothing can be taken from you, unwatermarked images are to be protected, these are precious things!
Subscriptions & Authorizations!
Your Subscription List and Authorization list a next! Subcribing to others is a wonderful thing, this way you wan follow the characters someone owns, and see everytime the person uploads new art for them; or you can follow an adopt marker- and even your friends to see whats up!
Now as I said above there is an Authorizations list, when you authorize someone you are trusting them with a lot. By authorizing- depending on how you upload your characters- this would me they can see private characters and unwatermarked images! Be careful who you authorize and how you handle your characters and their images!
Block Function!
There is also a helpful Block function here, though it is limited in its functions you can block people you do not wish to be able to contact or see your characters or anything you post- though you can still kinda see it.
Quiet Mode
While going through your settings you may have also noticed the "Turn Quiet Mode On" button in the Account section of the settings. This little function makes it so people who aren't authorized are not able to pm to ping you- well you wont recieve the notification that is.
Pings & Replying in Forums!
Whats a ping you ask? Well its a tag essentially, and currently the only way to really reply to people when posting in forums. To ping someone simply place @ username with no space in between then two. Be careful when typing a username though, if you mess up the ping then editing it wont fix the person not getting the notification. You'll have to ping them in a seperate comment! If you create a thread and want to keep track of it you should probably ping yourself so that it shows up in your notifications box! But don't press clear or else you'll loose it!
Also, if someone happens to comment on your thread you will recieve a notification! To reply to them simply use a ping and type it as I stated above! Thus you wont have to ping anyone in their own thread, they will automatically be notified that someone has posted in their thread!
That should be enough of the basics to help get yah going, so if you have any questions feel free to ask and welcome to toyhouse!
Special Thanks To:
ninthform for the new Thread name!
To Do List of info to edit and add/suggestions for the thread:
Touch ups with more bit of new info, please feel free to suggest something to be explained and I will do my best to explain
~ @Emmerynn
MHHHHH is there anyway to organize this in a more segmented way? Like using tables or bullet points? I suffer from visual overloads and dyslexia so this wall of text is super intimidating unless it can be broken down maybe? ; u ; /
unless you were getting to that then NVM
I'm all up for introduction thread too, I have been actually planning to make one myself for a while now ; v ;
Since there are so many people here and it'd be nice to get to know them a little better than just their toyhou.se profiles
Could OP maybe start by posting introduction? I mean mostly because I feel like nobody else really dares to be the first one to start the introductions here haha ; v ;
I know I'm too shy to start the whole thing pfff
Oh thank goodness, we needed a thread like this
Anyways hello there, I am Xen, I'm a p chill guy who likes people, hugs, and snails. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) I like making lots of jokes and overall just laughing like a hyena at any memes you may send me. Been making characters and rping since I was a baby snail . 🐌
Finally I really like taling with people so if you have a Steam or play Transformice or something, my username on both those platforms is Xenguy. (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
Also I'm having too much fun with these emojis lmao, save me.