Looking to start a guild? Try here. I will be creating a walk through on the best way to create a guild. If your starting a guild, and need a little help, try reading this guide.
PLEASE NOTE: These are more opinionated than actual fact, so some of you may disagree with my opinions. If you have comments, please comment below and I will consider changing my guide.
Onward!
The Guild's Birth
The very beginning of your guild. This is one of the most delicate parts of the process, as it can determine what will happen to your guild in the future. First, lets start with a name. All guilds have names, obviously. Now, when you are picking your name, don't rush. Think about it for a while if needed. The name of your guild is the first impression someone has on it, so make sure it is something that will make someone go "Hey! This guild has a pretty cool name, they must be a good guild." Obviously, the quality of a guild is not based on its name, but it can give people a good first impression. So, make sure the name is a good one. Also, you may want to be of a descent level. If you are too low of a level, nobody will really want to listen to you and join. Its quite sad, but thats unfortunately the way most people think. So you should probably want to be at least a level 30 before you start one.
Now, before you actually create the physical guild, make sure of this. DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT, start your guild alone. If you start a guild with just one or two people, it will be extremely difficult to make it grow quickly in the future. It can be done starting solo, but it is a lot of extra work for you. The best thing to do, is to start a guild with a group of loyal friends. These people will be the start of your guild, your first officers, and perhaps some of them will later become Co-Guildmasters. Starting with a group helps keep you with a small group of loyal members that can help you lead your guild, recruit, keep order, and more.
In my opinion at least, it is best to wait for your name to get approved before you begin to go recruiting members. People are more encouraged to join if they see a name instead of Pirate Guild ######. If you want to do a bit on a small scale, then thats fine, but it will probably be easier once you have a guild name.
Also, when you first create the guild, you probably shouldn't worry too much about rules. You may want to have a few basic ones, but don't have many in depth rules. During the Guild Birth period (as I will call this phase) you really just want to worry about keeping your guild alive and together. When you feel ready, add in some more in depth rules.
Promotions. Everyone does this differently. When you are in the very beginning of your guild, you really shouldn't be too strict with promotions. For this time, the biggest problem to face is keeping members in your guild. Now, this doesn't mean you should be on Abassa saying "Everyone is an officer!". In the beginning, you should make people veterans not really based on responsibility, etc, but based on how long they have been in the guild. If they have been in for a few days, or even a few hours if you want, then make them veterans. However, you should still be careful about officers. Even though they can only remove 5 members per day, in the beginning phase of your guild, that is a lot. Make people work towards it, this will make them want to stay active in the guild. However again, don't be too strict in the beginning of the guild. Again, its up to you when to stop doing this, but I would probably start getting a bit stricter on promotions somewhere around 30-50 members.
Follow these steps when you are first making your guild, and it should start out quite well. Again, this is my opinion, and if you have differing thoughts, please comment.
I will be adding more to this guide as time goes on.