Nintendo WiFi Clan Alliance

Redefining Nintendo Clans

How to make a clan

Posted by Muziki in Clan Tips

Hola NWA, I thought I’d try my hand at writing something that everyone wishes they knew how to do. How to make a successful clan. So many people rush out and make terrible sites and have no way to get members and it turns into just another dead clan. So what do you do? Here’s what I advise.

Should you make a clan?

Before you rush out and make a clan, you should find out how high the demand is. Are any of your friends clanless? Are there hoards of people on NWA who change which clan they’re loyal to every few days? If most people are already quite happy in their clan, they probably aren’t gonna leave it just to give yours a shot. But hey, why should that stop a really great clan from being created? It probably shouldn’t, so go ahead and continue with your plans.

What you need

In my experience, there are several critical roles in a clan that need to be filled.

• First, you need a gamer.

Obviously, there are going to be a lot of gamers. But you need a really really really good gamer. This person is probably going to be the figurehead of your clan and the most ‘famous’ one, if your clan does make it to that stage. Why? They’re the best and everyone wants to beat them. Translation: Your clan is the best and everyone wants to beat you. Surprisingly (or perhaps not), this is a good thing.

• Second, you need a nerd.

You need someone with basic coding knowledge and who can make sweet graphics. Doesn’t have to be the same person. Needs to know at least a little bit about site design. Should have admin privileges so they can edit the site.

• Third, an organizer.

You need someone who knows what’s right, what’s fair, and what’s going to work. They have to be able to listen to the members and what they want. After all, this is a community, not a dictatorship.

• Fourth, a recruiter.

Now what good is this wonderful site without anyone there? Make sure you have someone who has connections and friends who will come to chat and support the clan. A clan of three people is hardly a clan, right?

• Lastly, you need critics.

These don’t have to be members of the clan. Anyone who is honest (and preferably not hurtful) will do.

Okay, now what?

Now you need to start organizing things. Get some general ideas going, then get the above people together. You don’t need the critics yet, that’s more for your website than anything else. If you want to have several game leaders, that might be wise. Or if you focus on one game, then a few leaders to help everyone else is good. You get the general idea, yes?

Before you make a clan, name, or any of it — you need to get some members to prejoin. How is this any different from normal joining? It really isn’t, but say someone walks up to you and says, “I has a clan, u shud join!” Are you going to? Probably not. Now how about this? “Hey, I was thinking about making a clan. Would you want to be part of it if I did?” It sounds a lot more one-on-one than just advertising for your clan like the first example. The person would feel more like a veteran since they were there from the start. Veterans hang around longer than normal members. That’s good. =D

Naming your clan

Once you’ve got together all of your prejoiners, it’s time to make a name for your clan. Make a big MSN group chat, or all gather on a public xat without so many people on it so you can converse in private. Maybe make your own xat and put it on a randomly made freewebs site, it doesn’t matter. You need to get everyone in one place and preferably at one time to discuss how things will work.

First things first — you need a name. Think of something that’s going to strike fear into the hearts of any foe who comes upon your masterful clan. Make it unique. Let’s say that I made a clan evolving around Team Fortress 2 (TF2 for short). TF2 Clan wouldn’t be very good. Rhymes are good, but creative diction (that means word choice, kids) is a big plus.

Next, your clan tag. Your name needs to shorten into a nice tag. Usually two or three letters is perfect. How on earth would you shorten TF2 Clan? TF2C is too long and obnoxious, but mostly still generic just due to name. TC cuts out half of the words. Think of something that can logically break down into a cool, unique clan tag.

Put it all together

Alright, you’ve got your name, members/veterans planning on joining and bringing a truckload of friends with them, and everything is all in gear. Now it’s time to set up who gets what position of the main groups listed earlier. Basically, there’s no cheat sheet here. You have to pick out who is best fit for what position. Who can handle being head admin without being arrogant? Will your organizer be best because they handle fights and such, or would your lead gamer be better because they’re the one everyone’s probably gonna hear about? Keep in mind that a single person might be able to handle two or three roles. This cuts down on options quite significantly. Pick who is best for lead admin. Your nerd needs to have access to at least site design elements such as skin, banner, etc. You may or may not give them access to ranks, member settings, etc. Your choice, really.

Now for your forums. Where should you host your site? Personally, I love IPBFree, but the Admin Control Panel (Admin CP or ACP for short) can be a bit hard to navigate. It’s easy with practice (or an experienced nerd, which you should be overjoyed to have anyway). Other options are InvisionFree, Proboards, and Forumotion. You could also pay for a private server, but you’re gonna need either a really good nerd or a really good host site to pull that off.

Wherever you may decide to make your forum, it’s time to get a good url. Assume you kept the name TF2 Clan and had chosen the gamer tag TF2C. What would a good site be? Usually your site has part of your clan tag in it. Assuming we went with IPBFree, would the best option be to go with tf2c.ipbfree.com? What if it’s taken? tf2clan.ipbfree.com? What if that’s taken? teamfortress2clan.ipbfree.com? Way too much effort, don’t go there. Keep it short and sweet. Easy to remember is key.

Now it’s time to make your forums. You’ll need a place for admins/staff/etc to talk. A place for your supported games is good. If you support more than just Nintendo, perhaps each area should get their own board. Remember to keep similar topics under the same category. Hopefully your nerd understands what I’m saying. Here your critics can finally look at your board and tell you what you think. Your nerd(s) may wish to make a banner and skin, mainly because they’re probably rather bored right now.

Ending Notes

Alright, that’s the fundamentals for creating your clan. I plan that my next huge blog post to be about how to organize your website, both with technical board stuff and how to make the skin, banner, and other visual elements cohesive with each other.

Good luck!

-Muziki

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Hackers shmackers…

Posted by Exolios in Clan Tips

Whew! I’ve been so busy lately! I need to code this huge program with a friend, and, I must say, interacting with a database is no easy task. While fixing some SQL vulnerabilities, I was thinking about how clans always say that they’ve been “hacked”. This statement is probably the funniest one I keep hearing from new clan leaders or newly created clans. See, in about 95% of those cases, that “hacking” is basically… well… not hacking. Either they’ve found out your password (by guessing) or they simply had access to a part of the admin panel (or whatever may be causing security issues) from the start.

In very few cases I’ve seen someone actually using their knowledge of software security to actually break through the forum software itself and do whatever they want. If a non-programmer ever uses a script (and miraculously get it to work), it’s most likely a very easy to use script and a pretty vulnerable forum software (or host). The most popular attacks on the internet are SQL Injections and cross-side scripting (XSS). There are tons of different attacks, but, I know those 2 are the most common on the Internet. I’m no expert in computer security, but, being a programmer, I know my share on what part of a software (or website) can be vulnerable.

“Tell me more, Exo! How does one hack a website?!”

Haha… No. Not because I don’t want to, though. Hell, I don’t care if you hack every single clan out there if it makes you feel better about yourself and your pathetic life. There is just no “Universal” vulnerability in software, only universal methods. I had a discussion about this with someone on the chat room once. He claimed he had a “Hacking Tool”. What is a “Hacking Tool” supposed to do? He claimed it hacked. Yeah, it magically hacked anything from software to websites and kittens as well. I’m not saying that there are helpful tools out there like Cain’s password recovery tool, but, if there are no universal exploits, there are no universal hacking programs.

What does all of this have to do with Nintendo Wi-Fi Clans? Well…

SECURE YOUR PASSWORDS.

Seriously! Having for password “password” is a very, very bad idea. It’s been cracked a long time ago already. I remember getting in someone’s account by cracking his password (I already had his MD5 hashed password string) to find out his password was his first name. Making a good password isn’t all that hard. The hardest part is probably actually remembering it. However, you could do as I do (this idea came from a friend in College) and simply add more characters at the beginning or at the end of your password when you need to change it.

A good password should…

• Be over 8 characters long
• Contain numbers
• Contain letters (capital letters too!)
• Contain symbols (yes, passwords can have commas, periods and semi-colons)

Your password technically shouldn’t have any words in it, but, I understand that its way easier to remember if you skip that rule. The final rule is probably the one people never follow: Change your password often. How often? You choose. I would suggest every 2 months, but, if you’re really paranoid, you could do it every 30 days. If you don’t change your password, it basically give more time to the password cracker to find out your password (who knows, maybe he’s really hardcore and he’s using brute force or rainbow tables!).

I almost forgot the most basic rule out there! When people ask me about passwords, I often forget about it since it’s… common sense. DO NOT (I repeat, DO NOT) share your passwords with people! As trustworthy they are, never tell your password to anyone. You can write your password down if you want to, but, make sure you always keep it somewhere safe.

To those who actually have a strong password and still got hacked, the other possibility of an actual attack (besides the hacker already having access to what he wanted) is always possible. Free forum creators like IPBFree, Invisionfree, or Forumer are not invincible. If security is a big issue for you, I’d suggest you to install a forum software yourself using free hosting. It isn’t easy if you don’t know what you’re doing, but, it’s worth it if you really care about your clan.

Now, I hope clans will actually follow the tips I gave them… Maybe not, but, it’s worth a try isn’t it?

~Exo

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Up and runnin’

Posted by Exolios in Site News

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“Whoa. Nice.”

This is hopefully what most of you said when you got on the Nintendo WiFi Clan Alliance’s homepage today!  The new design is quite surprising indeed. Or perhaps you were surprised that the NWCA is made of other pages than the ever popular topsites? Well, if you’re reading this, I assume you now know.

What is exactly the purpose of the Nintendo WiFi Alliance besides having a (stupid and annoying) Xat chatroom for other clans to advertise in relentlessly? Glad you ask! The Nintendo WiFi Clan Alliance, often abbreviated NWA or NWCA is the number one website on the Internet for Nintendo Clans. Simply put, if you ever hear about Nintendo Clans, you’ll probably hear about the NWA (unless that other clan’s been hiding under a rock or something). As our slogan say, we want to “redefine Nintendo Clans”. Basically, we provide help, resources, tutorials, and tips for Clan Leaders and even Clan Members. You may know about our main way of communication, the topsites chat and perhaps about the old ClanPedia (undergoing a face lift at the moment)… New features will be available soon such as Clan Reviews and a whole new IRC Chatroom. Check back later for updates on those features!

Since this is the very first post on the new Blog, I can’t just bid you guys and gals farewell! So, let me talk about that IRC Chatroom idea… Ever since the NWCA Xat Chatroom got extremely popular (at the end of 2008 to be exact), I’ve been wanting to change it. Why? Although a Xat Chatroom is easy to use and easy to implement on a website, it has a really, really (I can’t stress this enough) bad ADMINISTRATION SYSTEM. Did you ever wanted to take a peek at what IP was banned from the chat? What about integrating the registration system with your own forum database? And what about additional privileges for the staff like setting for how many hours a moderator can ban someone? All those factors don’t really help making that chat software the best.

Second of all, the looks. I have nothing against Flash Chats (actually, I promote them and encourage you to use them!), but, Xat Chats don’t look very good. They’re not sleek, they’ve got bit buttons as if the users using them were blind, and they’re overall not very ergonomical. I like how you can customize the background as well as some colors, but, if the original design is awful to begin with, I don’t see the point of doing so.

Last but no least, the widget system. It seems some clans ABUSE widgets. Yes, abuse. How? When you have around 10 widgets including a flash clock, a radio, 2 or 3 chatrooms and an animated fiery text field on one page, you have a problem (widget fetish?). Ask yourself: “Do my users really need all of these”? Most of the time, 1 or 2 widgets are fine. Cluttering a website with them will most likely make the users leave right away. But I digress! I’ll leave my software ergonomics classes for another post…
What do I propose to replace that Xat Plague? IRCs (Internet Relay Chatrooms)! IRCs’ have been around for over 20 years, and they’re still being used by users, so, that just shows how reliable they are. Running on Java, an IRC is EXTREMELY fast (seriously). You’ll get the feeling you’re sharing a Word Document with someone, depending on your connection of course. While there is specialized IRC Clients like mIRC, there’s also Flash-based chatrooms like Mibbit.com for clans to embed on their websites. What else is there to IRCs? There’s tons of fun scripts like trivia (my favorite), an AI Robot, Tic-tac-toe, Uno, RSS feed parsing, and many more. So, I’m asking you, what’s better? A plain Xat Chat, or an efficient Chat with features on steroids? I’ll let you decide in the poll.

In the following month, I’ll be finalizing my IRC server so you guys can Beta-Test it along with the Flash Client.

Until next time,

Exo

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