How to Create a Successful Guide

[Sheldon]

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Let me start off by saying that there are a lot of great guides here on central that serve their purpose. Some are really popular like Johnny's Screenshot Guide and Micheal's Rank Guide (I'm naming a few here -- there are A LOT more!) and some slip under the radar. If you're a first-time-guide-maker or want to make your guide better hopefully this post will help you!




Why make a guide?

There are plenty of reasons to create a guide. Guides help the millions of pirates around the spiral complete difficult quests, hunt down lost treasure, recruit those hidden companions and gain the latest and best gear for their Pirate.


When's best to create a guide?

Believe it or not, this is the easiest part of creating a guide. It's very simple to identify when a guide is in dire need. Look around central, are people asking "Where is this located at?" or "How do I do this?", these are clear indicators that a guide is needed, especially if most of the population are having the same problem.


How to Make a Guide

Things will start to get hard here. Good Guides won't be easy, there's a lot of planning and researching that go into them, for example if you're going to make a guide about a Cheating Boss, you are going to need to fight that boss over and over again to determine his or her's individual cheats and their triggers. Here are some pointers:


Look around Central

1: Use the Search box to see if their is a guide already out there.
2: If there is, see if you can make any improvements to make your guide extra helpful.
3: If there isn't get planning you've got some work to do!

The Guide

Naming It

Don't have a long and drab title that goes on and on and on and on. Have a clear title that is to the point, for example: "All Privateer Companions" and not " A complete Guide to every Privateer Companion you will recruit in your travels in the Skyway" It's important to have a short name so people can easily find it when using the search feature on central or simply googling for the guide. The simpler the guide title, the easier it is to find.

Introduction

The first thing you need on your guide is a short description of what the guide will explain and what the problem you are having is and how you plan on tackling it.

Information

Every guide needs information, if your guide doesn't have information, it won't be very reliable and/or informative. Including good and reliable information will help your guide become more popular and a go-to guide for people wanting help in that specific field. Whenever you find the information online or on central, never forget to credit the source.

Pictures

Pictures help back-up your information, if you're explaining where a hidden object is and you show this in a picture, it gives photographic evidence and therefore supports your information. I can guarantee that any guide that has pictures will take any old boring guide to a great guide (do remember that if you have pictures, don't forget to have text with it explaining the picture otherwise you're just giving the reader a nice picture to admire). Pictures are not a necessity but they do help liven up any guide.

Tips and Tricks
Before you publish your guide onto the internet, add some Tips and Tricks that you found particularly helpful when you conquered the problem, also, if there's another guide that can help people in the future that you think is particularly helpful; link them to it. Also, be proud of your guide, place links in your signature to gain some publicity to your guide.

Feedback.
Never be afraid to ask people for feedback, there are tons of helpful people out there that can help you further improve your guide.

Polls generally take the attention away from the main guide itself. Although Polls count as feedback, these shouldn't be used on guides, members posting what they think is exactly the same as posting a poll.





Extra Info

Always remember that every time you make a guide publish it in the General Pirate101 Guides Forum where it will be sorted into its respective guide forum by our lovely guide moderator: Paige Moonshade.

Guides that are left un-completed will be moved to the Guide Graveyard, as well as guides that are out dated or have broken images.

Plagiarism is a big no-no, always ensure that your guide is your words and not someone else's that you have Copied and Pasted

This post contains 2 auto-link(s) to our wiki for your reference.

[5sos]

Wow, this is a fantastic guide! I'm sure it will be very useful for beginners and even a nice check-up for the experienced!
I really like how you have it all broken up in the sections--that puts a rest on my eyes. (:
Overall, I appreciate you taking the time and energy to write this guide on guides.

See ya on the Skyways,

~2008kate

[Paige MoonShade]

Thank you . This is what Pirate101 Central needed.

[Cedric Young]

This should help a lot of people when they make a new guide. I've seen quite a few "Guides" that aren't written very well, or just don't look good. Hopefully this guide will help create some awesome new guides.

P.S. I like how you wrote a guide on how to write a guide. :P

[Blaze LionRider]

Did you use these steps to make this guide?

[Cret92]

Another thing you didn't mention that I feel would be good to add. I see people sometimes posting guides that are as little as 10-20% complete. In my opinion, you should wait until you have at least 40-50% of the required information for your guide before posting it. Many guides that start off with barely any information in them tend to never get finished.

[Sheldon]

Guides that are left un-completed will be moved to the Guide Graveyard, as well as guides that are out dated or have broken images.

I have this, and also Paige has got this on her thread:

Many guides stay in the General Pirate101 Guides forum to be watched and to make sure the member works on it and doesn't just throw a thread up with no content. I do send pm's if I see a member isn't keeping up with their guide and if they don't respond the guide is sent to the graveyard.

[Paige MoonShade]

Bringing this guide back to top.

[mrx5678]

thank you sir