Clubs are a mini-community within the larger 'Zetapets' community. Zeta Help is a community. Clubs can be created for any reason, but mostly its for people with similar interests to hangout and have a 'centre' for meeting lots of others at the same time (imagine the number of zmails required to get to know one person) whereas the forums in the club allow people to post on whatever topic interests them and have feedback from other members. The admin can also create polls for interaction. Clubs are probably one of the most important aspects of Zetapets. This guide will show you how to create/join a club, and tips on modifying the design, as well as any known bugs.

We have tried to make this as accurate and correct as possible. If you notice any errors, please contact us!

This page was last updated on May 10th 2004.

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*Joining a club*
You may already have found a club that you want to join. (shameless plug for ZetaHelp here!) At this point in time, Zetapets allows clubs to have either private or public status. For public clubs, all you have to do is surf to the club main page (usually ends with "id=###") and click on the 'Enlist' link on the top right corner of the club page, right of the club name to join. If you want to join a private club however, you will need an invitation from one of the club members. Normally these members are happy for you to zetamail them for an invitation.

Once you have joined, you normally have access to the club forums as well as the right to vote in the polls. Only the club-owners (and their co-owners) have the right to modify polls, change the club layout, posting news as well as monitoring forum posts. But often (certainly the case with ZetaHelp) there will be lots of activities for a normal member to participate in, and the more posts you make on the club forum, the higher your 'rank-status' in forum posts.

*Creating a club*
Perhaps none of the clubs are really right for you or you prefer to be in control of the design, competitions etc. All you have to do to join the 'club-owner' group, is to go to the Clubs main page, and click on 'Create a Club'. Enter the club name, description etc. whatever necessary and then click on the 'Create' button to finalise everything. If you cannot think of what to change at this stage (eg. the 'forum-rank' values for 50, 100, ... posts) you can always modify them later. You can always delete a club if you do not wish to continue with it (or resign)

*Modifying the design*
Click on 'Modify' under the 'Admin' box to change and modify any settings. It is actually not always a straight-forward matter when modifying the look of your club (at the time of writing). The "text box" likes to put < /br> if you leave any spaces in your HTML code when you click on update. Hopefully this will change in future updates (along with the themes bug as below)

I have found that it is always a good idea to keep a copy of the code saved in a textfile (eg. Notepad) on your hard-drive, so you can just copy and paste it in to the text box given. The main editing page does have some helpful commands - as shown in the screen shot below:

*Some little tips*

It is fairly important to have something that will entertain your club members - even some interesting forum posts (only 10 topics are shown and old ones are deleted off the screen). Content is always more important than the design. Treat the club as you would your own website, and ask yourself: If I visited the club, what is there to attract me to stay? What would make me want to be an active member? Would I recommend it to someone else? etc. You get the general idea.

Patience and perserverance is a huge personality plus for any club owner. In the Zetaworld of many clubs, and not that many users seeking to join a club, it may take sometime for any club member to join. So it is important to continue promoting the club all the time, thus attracting new members, as well as continue making the club 'sticky' for existing members. As far as I know competitions are not banned on Zetapets - so it might be one way of encouraging some interaction.

In terms of the design, it is quite normal for people to use tables or iframes etc. There are a few 'ready-made' layout sites out there at the moment (see Resources for a list) but we rcommend that you play around with the HTML code (see our html guide for some basic html help) and you should have something aside from the default "Hello xxx, this club was created by xxx on xxx and has xxx". Even some pictures, or some interesting information will be helpful in attracting members.

Finally, a club is ultimately for people with similar 'ideals' or 'interests' so creating a generic/general club may not always succeed. But the hard work will pay off in the end.

*Known bugs*

At the time of the last update, I have found that: