Create Basic Guideline

1.8/administration/basic-guideline

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+---
+layout: page
+title:  "First steps"
+categories: [administration]
+---
+
+## Administration panel
+
+Administration panel is first thing you enter when you install new software. Why? To create your forum. By new instalation you have just one forum without anything else so it is **necessary** to visit Admin CP (Control Panel) first.
+
+But what to do when you enter it and get lost in whole bunch of functions? Here is basic guideline to start your first steps with MyBB.
+
+##  Home
+
+First when you enter Administration panel, you will be at index page of your Admin CP, at the "Dashboard". In this place you can see **basic informations** of your forum such as your forum version, is it updated, posts, users and else.
+At that place you can also leave notes to other administrators.
+
+At the left side you can see **Quick Access** Which will be there all the time so you can easily access any of that important points of your forum at any time.
+
+### Preferences 
+
+This is small page in which you can **change language** of your administrator panel if you have uploaded it. That will be useful to you if your native language is not English.
+
+Next here you can change there theme of your administration panel and write notes just for yourself (other administrators will not be able to see them).
+
+## Configuration
+
+If you are first time on forum, you will spent some time here to set it up, ready to go and publish.
+Here are some most important things in that place of forum.
+
+### Settings
+
+If you are new and forum is not set yet, maybe you may want to close it for visitors. That can be done in **Board Online / Offline**. There you can switch if you want your forum closed for others or opened. If you choose closed, you will get message which will be displayed to visitors of your forum.
+
+Nextly you may edit some **Site Details** if you want to change Board title, or other cookie, url or contact information about your site.
+
+In **General Configuration** you can change default board language as well as CAPTCHA and other minor things like decimal point and so.
+
+**Date and Time Formats** is almost must do if your native is not English so you will need some work there too. But before playing with that formats you may check this link to check out how they work: http://php.net/manual/en/function.date.php
+
+Next you should check **Login and Registration Options** as well as **Profile Options** in which you can choose methods of registration, some security settings and what new user need to fill in his profile and such informations.
+
+Now it's time to check **Show Thread Options** and **Forum Display Options** to see basics about threads and posts display and function in forum.
+
+There are more settings which you may be interested in, but for start setting this few things up is fine.
+
+### Banning
+
+This is place when you can ban someone from forum, or ban someone's IP and so. Please note that you can access this setting from Users & Groups -> Banning, too.
+
+### Custom profile fields
+
+There you can request some more profile fields or edit existing and request them at registration if you need it and so.
+
+### Warning System
+
+This is next thing you should check if you want some kind of warnings at forum. Here you can put and edit warning types and levels which moderators and adninistrators will be able to give to users for braking the rules.
+
+### Security Questions
+
+This point is **must** if you want some protection of spam bots. Here you can set up your security questions and answers which users should write at registration.
+
+## Forums and Posts
+
+Finally we are here, we can create and edit our first categories and forums here as well as set their permissions. 
+
+In this place of forum you can add and delete categories, forums and subforums. Be extremely careful while creating them and giving permissions to users to have maximum of security and to have organised forum by categories and forums. You can easily sort them as you wish by simply putting numbers in "order" field. Forum will short it so forums and categories with lowest numbers are first and with biggest numbers are last.
+
+## Users and Groups
+
+When you finished with setup of forum, you have your forums and subforums and you are almost ready to go, you need some groups of moderators, administrators, who will manage your forum if you need help. Than can be done here.
+
+### Awaiting activation
+
+If you put in settings that administrator is approwing new members you will spent a lot of time here activating members accounts.
+
+### Groups
+
+Here you can manage user groups, give them username colors, custom user titles and similar things for all users in same group. Also, here you can change permissions of specific group of users.
+
+### User titles
+
+Here you can give some default user titles for your members
+
+## Templates and Style
+
+And we are here, almost ready with our forum, at last stage of putting it on track. Here you can import or edit your theme in templates or css.
+Or simply upload it by clicking at **Import theme** and following steps given by theme maker.
+
+## Tools and Maintenance
+
+Here you can see your detailed forum informaton as well as logs what administrators and moderators did on forum, as well as other logs. They are all aviable here