it's funny hearing about staffing with people you know well when half the advice i've always heard is to never hire your friends as staff haha

(personally i think it's just anecdotal. i've staffed with my friends and it was great. i've staffed with my friends and it wasn't that great.)

This is how Chibi makes a site:

Me: Write, need to write, yes, that the plan.

Me before the write: Code

Me again: Now write, now write, now write.

tbh i mostly started the staff advice because I'm seeing a pattern of new admins opening sites with completely empty forums with nothing for prospective members to get excited about. It's not guaranteed to work, but my general advice is to have as few forums as possible and make sure there's something in all of them.

Scope is also a big thing for new sites. This is one I've run into myself: "oh I have all these cool ideas!!!" yeah and how many of those ideas do you have members for? Start with what you're most excited about and branch out. The smaller in scope that your RP is, the easier you'll be able to mash characters together and not run into "but my guy wouldn't be here" syndrome. Let factions and locations expand naturally and you'll find an easier time kicking off the most important part of the site: actually RP'ing. Sites can ALWAYS grow. It's a lot harder to shrink.

why does it feel like new members always join when the staff team is having an irl crisis lol i know it probably is just because everything is always a chaotic crisis in my life but we will have good weeks and no one touches it, but then crisis happens and suddenly new people T.T

balancing a site is so stressful like what do you mean you don't know if all the disparate pieces work well together until you actually have people play in your sandbox. arrghhhhhh i just need to remember that i don't have to get everything correct in the first week but also: I Gotta

Well.... That's a new one, I was being forced to do like six catchpas per site and got temp blocked from catchpa.

as staff, captchas kill my soul

honestly i would eat up advertising if captchas didn't exist

*lies facedown on the floor*

why does anyone make an rp site

masochism and a deep sense of self-hatred

I've had staffing result in some of my best friendships that have lasted the test of time.

...And I've had staffing change my opinions on people I otherwise loved and adored, because my god, not everyone is designed to be both an ideal coworker and an ideal friend. Modding is way, way closer to a coworker relationship, in my experience.

I'd say it's better to get an idea of what your own personal work style is, and search for collaborators that work well with you. If you're choosing from among your friends, go in with this approach too.

Tidied up the code to reflect the changes I made to the site skin, and it looks snazzy. ^-^