Hi, welcome to my first blog post and first part on Server Management for Starters - Staff. Let's get started:

Picking Staff

Are you starting a server or a network? You'll need a quality pick of staff members to help you out. The first choice would be one of your best (real life, of course) friends, who happens to be someone playing Minecraft. This way, you can contact them frequently via face-to-face contact or Skype chat, etc. You can always trust your best friend...unless he/she's a piece of unicorn meat.

The second choice is to get a close Minecraft friend. If you don't have many friends in real life, you'll easily find one in Minecraft. Strike a conversation with someone your size, and soon you'll be best buddies! Well...not really...but you get the point. If you find him/her trustworthy, that's one of your second choices.

Lastly, if you don't have really any choices for some reason, go ahead and post a server recruitment post in the 'Server Recruitment' part of the PMC forums. There are plenty of good people on the forums, but you just need to get the right batch. Here are some things to look for in a staff member, and how to strengthen them:

• Maturity - Are they inappropriate? Do they spew out disgusting profanities, or are they so serious that you feel scared? Examine your staff members until you can find a average on a 1-10 scale.
  
• Skills - Do they have the basic skils to do anything? Are they experts in WorldEdit? Think about all the skills required on your server, and compare them to your staff.
  
• Commitment - Do they commit time, services, or money to the server a lot? Are they barely online? Set a requirement or a schedule for your staff.
  
• Trustworthiness - Is one of your staff members acting strange? Is she/he starting to get a lot of reports? Start investigating into your staff members until you can generate a strong opinion on his or her personality.
  

Staff Application Template
Let's take a break! Here's a cool example staff application if you're ever searching for anyone on PMC. 

IGN: (Your in-game name in Minecraft)
Name: (Your real-life name. Preferably first, only)
Age: 
Maturity Level: (Your maturity level on a scale of 1 to 10)
Commitment Level: (How much time, money, or skills you're willing to commit to the server on a scale of 1 to 10)
Unique Skills: (Do you have any unique skills? A special way to talk to players? Explain, please!)  
Why should we choose you:

So there's a very simple application template made by me, with some basic description on the parts. Feel free to use it with or without credit.

Things to Look for in Applications

Are you going with the third/final choice? Here's some things you can look into in applications, and determine whether that person deserves that rank or not.

• Grammar - One of my most favorites, check out their grammar. Is it sloppy and misspelled? Definitely question that one if the person's age is 15 years old. Hmm...
  
• Age - Check out the age before doing a lot of things. People aged 11 + should be sort of fine, but you want to look for the older ones. They tend to be more mature.
  
• Patience - Are you in the process of checking 9 applications and get 3 continuous private messages from one of the applicants? Poke around a bit more and see what's up with that.
  
• Media - Hey..one of your applicants only has a email account and claims they're 17. Maybe you should ask them about it? Go ahead.
  

So, this is the end of the first part of my Server Management for Starters blog posts. I've got a lot of advice. Go ahead and PM me anytime if you want private server advice, I'll help out. Please diamond, comment, and subscribe for more!

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