Getting Started

Volunteering your efforts and insights to a grass-roots, yet international, multi-sport, internet project can be intimidating. 
This page helps you figure out what to do and how you can help. This step-by-step introduction to the site should give new visitors an idea of how to go forward. You should be able to go through all of these steps in about 30 minutes, but if you don't have that much time right now, do as much as you can, and you can pick up where you left off later.
Remember: we all want you to plunge forward and get going -- please, give it a try!
If for any reason you have problems with any of these steps, send us an email at help@CLOH.Org. Our administrators will be happy to help you through the process, and we can use the opportunity to improve this documentation.
==To Do==
===1. Create an account. (recommended)===
You can read and edit this wiki without registering as a user, but it helps a lot if you do. Go to the registration page to sign up; it should only take a minute. After you register, the next time you come back to this site, you can log in with your username and password by going to the login page or using the form in the upper-righthand corner of any page.
===2. Write your user page. (recommended)===
Your user page is the place where other people find out about you. It's found at User:Yourusername (different depending on your user name), and when you're logged in there's a link in the upper-righthand corner of every page. People will look there to find out more about you.
Since it's initially empty, you can start editing new page when you get there. Just look for the "edit" button and start typing; see Help:Editing pages for more info. Some questions you may want to answer: What's your name? Where do you live? Give pointers to your other home page. Tell us what regions have you traveled to. If you're shy or just cautious, share as little or as much information as you want. Remember: you don't have to get it perfect the first time; you can go back and edit the page later as often as you want.
If you get this far, you've done the hardest part! You've now got all the skills needed to be a real help!
===3. Upload a picture of yourself. (optional) ===
It can help people learn to think of you as a real person, rather than a name on the screen, if you upload a picture of yourself and put it on your user page. Just go to the upload page, choose an image from your local hard drive, and upload it. Then, you can add the image to your user page; see Help:Images for more info.
===4. Add some sports or fitness resources in your home town. (recommended)
Explore and build directories of local resources and information for different cities and regions. You can help by adding info about your home town. First, find your home town -- for help see Help:Searching or Help:Navigation. The name of the page should read like Resources:YourHomeTown (different depending on your home town). Feel free to edit that page to add some new info (or correct what's already there). 
===5. Share your knowledge about a topic. (recommended)===
Is there anything you want other people to know? Find the page on that topic (again Help:Searching and Help:Navigation can help), read what's there already, and edit it to include your info. See Help:Editing pages for help with editing. If there's no page on the topic... you can help us get one started! See Help:Starting a new page.
===6. Add a new term. (recommended)===
What was the last term you came to understand. If it already exists (Help:Searching), edit the page (Help:Editing pages) with your impressions or other information. If the article about that concept doesn't exist yet, you can quickly create it. Just fill in the fields that you know, and click save to save the input.
===7. Ask a question on a talk page. (optional)===
If you've gotten this far, you've probably come up with a few questions about the project or a topic. Every article has a corresponding "talk page" where people can discuss it. To get to the "talk page" for a particular page, go to the page, then click on "discussion" or "talk" in the left-hand menu. (See Using talk pages for more information.) There, you can see previous discussion about the page (if any), and you can add your own. Just edit the page (Help:Editing pages), and type in your question. Do you think the information on the page is incomplete? Does this page duplicate another one? Do you want some feedback on your contributions? Whatever you feel like discussing, feel free to put it on the page.
===8. Leave a message for another user. (optional)===
The talk pages for user pages are called "user talk pages". You can leave a message for another contributor on their user talk page. First, pick a user to leave a message for -- maybe the person who invited you to start working here, or one of the founders, listed on the About page. Go to their user page (try Help:Searching and Help:Navigation for how to get there), and then use the left-hand menu to go to their talk page. You can then edit the page (Help:Editing pages) to leave a message. Don't be shy -- they'll be really glad to hear from you!
===9. Read more about CLOH.Org. (optional)===
As you get more involved, you may want to learn more about our project. The Community portal is a one-stop shop for learning more about the community. None of this stuff is mandatory -- don't let all the text intimidate you -- but if you want to know more, it can help.
===10. Wash, rinse, repeat.===
There's lots more to do with this wiki, but if you get this far, you've got the skills to learn all about them. Feel free to come back and work on these steps over and over again. 
==Additional information==
* Community section -- everything you need to know about our project, its community and guidelines.
* Help section -- everything you need to know to start or edit pages, and and the other features of the site.