So you have decided to share your material with the audience of The Forge? Here are some things you need to know before you get started:

• Contributions are copyrighted to the author. The Forge makes no claim to member contributions.
  
• The Forge cannot accept any contribution without the approval of the original author; any contributions sent to d20Forge will be removed from the site if there is a question of ownership or author. Please do not post any material unless it is your own, or you have been given explicit permission to post it by the original author.
  
• We will not accept any copyrighted stats or articles that have been published previously in an Official source. An exception to this rule is conversions of previous edition material, which we do accept provided they meet all other guidelines. For conversions, the entry must list the book and page number where the original stats can be found.

Now that we have that out of the way here are the guidelines for contribution approval. Keep these in mind when crafting your contribution as they are the rules applied when moderating a contribution. If a contribution does not meet these guidelines it will be rejected.

1. Contributions MUST be free of spelling and grammar errors, use proper sentence structure, punctuation and capitalization. All of these things reflect on the quality of your contribution. A great contribution with poor spelling and punctuation will not be as well received by your audience.
2. If you are familiar with HTML try to do some basic formatting, so that your contributions are clear and easy to read. If you aren't familiar with it please take some time to learn the basic tags for elements like paragraphs, line breaks, bulleted lists, and tables. Ask for help on the forums or go through a few web based tutorials. Some tutorials can be found on the following sites:
   http://www.htmlgoodies.com/primers/primer_2.html
   http://www.pageresource.com/html/basic.htm
   http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/
   
3. Leave fields that do not apply to your contribution blank. Do not enter 'none, n/a, etc.' into irrelevant fields.
4. Enter in all relevant information and be as complete and detailed as possible. Remember descriptive information or flavor text is just as important as game mechanics.
5. Proper Editor Notes are mandatory! Any contribution that has been edited but lacks detailed Editor Notes will be rejected until proper Editor Notes are provided. The moderators do not have the time to try and figure out what changes you made.
6. If you are unsure about game mechanics and/or your contributions in general, please make use of the Sounding Board in the Forums. There are a number of people there who are intimately familiar with the game mechanics and can help you work them out.
7. Make use of the View History functionality in your My Contributions area, whether your contribution has been approved or rejected. It provides information from the moderators as to why your contribution was rejected or hints/tips on how to make them better in the future.
8. Add [Beta. Do not post] to the name of your contribution if you are still working on it. This lets the moderators know that it is not ready for review yet so they don't approve/reject your unfinished work.
9. Work on one contribution at a time. Make sure it is well written, follows the guidelines lain out here and the game mechanics in general. Better to have fewer good contributions, than plenty of poor ones.
10. Make use of the various tags (3.0, 3.5, Bastions, etc.). This makes it easier for others to find and use your contributions.
11. If you are creating any type of Class, please use the following format to construct your tables properly.
    
         <table cellspacing=0 class='classtable'>
    
             <tr>
                 <th class="classtable">Level</th>
                 <th class="classtable">Base Attack Bonus</th>
                 <th class="classtable">Fort Save</th>
                 <th class="classtable">Ref Save</th>
                 <th class="classtable">Will Save</th>
                 <th class="classtable">Class Features</th>
             </tr>
    
             <tr>
                 <td class="classtable">1st</td>
                 <td class="classtable">+0</td>
                 <td class="classtable">+0</td>
                 <td class="classtable">+1</td>
                 <td class="classtable">+1</td>
                 <td class="classtable">Bonus Feat</td>
             </tr>
    
             <tr>
                 <td class="classtable">2nd</td>
                 <td class="classtable">+1</td>
                 <td class="classtable">+0</td>
                 <td class="classtable">+2</td>
                 <td class="classtable">+2</td>
                 <td class="classtable">Sneak Attack +1d6</td>
             </tr>
    
             <tr>
                 <td class="classtable">3rd</td>
                 <td class="classtable">+2</td>
                 <td class="classtable">+1</td>
                 <td class="classtable">+2</td>
                 <td class="classtable">+2</td>
                 <td class="classtable">Bonus Feat</td>
             </tr>
    
             ...etc...
    
         </table>
    
    It is very easy to do provided you follow this form - just copy and paste the code, repeating where necessary. Do NOT omit any part of the code, especially the class='' elements: they are critical to the proper layout of the table.
12. Take note of the icons. Clicking them provides information for the field they are near, such as information required and format. Clicking them again hides that information. If this feature isn't working for you hold down the SHIFT key while you refresh to retrieve the latest code.

If you have any Questions or Comments directed them to Jamie or Nhurdi.