VIP money is what makes the site live. I find it only normal that you get a lot of advantages when paying for an online RPG site. 

The thing is, newcomers will have to read all the rules & guides at some point, and the sooner the better. But I agree that if the Beginner's guide is too long, it will discourage a lot of them. That is why I suggest you to owl your MoM or HM and point out the pieces of info you find useless in the Beginner's guide - it will help all the newbies after you if it's edited in a better way. I don't know which site you are on, but on mines these guides are less than a page long. That is why only your staff can change this issue.

I totally understand your preoccupations, however I still believe it's a site-scale problem as every site (and every house of every site) has their own way to welcome newbies ;)

About the length of the beginner's guide, I suggest you to speak about it to the relevant authorities ;) 

Also, about the "how the newbie feels", I believe a welcoming team would then help a lot, as it can be way more personal than the automatic house welcoming - I know eagles on EU use to post a message on the walls and send another owl, so when the newbie sees the familiar name in chat they already feel more confident. Again, you shall suggest it to the right staff member. I do not consider it as "asking for help" but more of "suggesting something to improve WoP experience" ^^

About the supplies, I've tested a few (WoP FR & EU) and all the links worked for me, but if you notice a bug, you can also report it to staff, as I agree that shopping the whole list without the links is a pain x)

By "intuitive", I mean that most parts of the site are rather easy to understand, especially chat and owls, which are the main ones to get started. Indeed the food system, assignments/classes or even how to write a RP seem weird at first, but this is what should be explained in the beginner's guide and well, if it really is too long, just tell the staff... I believe I repeat myself too much :') but this is something that has to be fixed on a site-scale. 

And finally, about the levelling up, it's again my own experience speaking (like... 2 years ago, eventhough a lot has changed since), I remember having had everything graded in 2 days and levelling up like crazy within a week. However sometimes the sites can have very few graders, so a ton of homework end up in the non-graded pile for ATs and teachers to deal with it - and this means they have a lot of work, so just... Tryna be patient and bless them for the hard work ? :') Grading and submitting are indeed the fastest ways to gain points and galleons, so I can get your frustration, but I'm sure your staff is doing the best they can to fix it and encourage grading... 

Hope this helps <3

Hi ! I'm going to comment each of the points you've listed : 

- The lack of ability to judge what to do : I understand it can be rather disturbing at first, but WoP is rather intuitive. Moreover, the House acceptance owls (the ones you get by getting accepted into a House) are often stuffed with informations and tips for beginners, same goes for the House clubs. Besides, you can suggest your Head of House to build up a Welcoming House Team (if it doesn't already exist) whose task would be to welcome and accompany the newbies through owls until they've grown at ease on the site. Opening an owl is super intuitive (I mean it's an envelope with a red number on it, can't be more obvious it is a PM), so every newbie will have their chance to talk to someone experimented.

- The supplies situation : I believe you can now get to the right shop by clicking the name of the furniture in the class presentation, instead of having to go through all the shops each time, and it's a lot easier. 

- The beginners guide length : as the site is based on writing, I guess one page or two shouldn't be that much of a deal to read. However if you really feel like this is way too much and contains useless information, you can talk about it to your Headmaster or Minister for Magic. About the "explaination message", I don't believe it would actually fit the length problem as the same informations would have to be included, but I send you back to my welcoming team/house acceptance owl suggestion. 

- New players and gold : it is actually very fast to raise from level 1 to 3 (and be able to grade) if you make a few assignments (first years are always the fastest ones graded), meet other users in chat, send a few owls and join some topics. I can tell you from experience this takes less than three hours, which is perfect to understand how the site works, get your school furniture & read and understand all the rules. In the worst case, it takes a week for your assignments to be graded, but you have plenty of time to do the other stuff within a week. 

- Restricting new players functionality : these restrictions were actually put to prevent issues with newbies not reading the grading guide, presents spam, and you can imagine the rest. However as I said, going up from a low level is rather fast already. 

In a nutshell, you can always talk to your site's staff if you believe newbies need more guidance ;)

If no coloured user is around (which seems rather rare to me, as on most sites you can always tag them in the GH chat or find a few on the Marauder's Map), then you shall remind the rules to the one breaking them, and report it through an owl to a staffmember or a prefect. 

If you do not agree with the rules, I don't believe you can do much to change them. They were created for the safety and comfort of all WoP users. Also, I believe the only difference between a "complaint" topic and the "idea" one is that the idea is often inspired by a complaint, and the complaint alone does rarely lead to anything ^^

So this means we would have to make different cards for each site ? Seems pretty hard to manage... also, what if someone is banned or quits the site or changes their backstory meaning we must change the card info, or we need to make a new set of cards for each new generation ? I like this idea but I don't believe it'd be doable. 

As this is a question that involves a specific class, I believe you should owl it to an Charms Assistant Teacher or the Charms Teacher of your site, not here ;) 

you can befriend the people you want to follow the achievements of. Also, we already have two newspapers and I believe a third one would be one too much. 

you should suggest your ideas to the Plot Team then

I find this idea rather nice, it would bring some more color to the site :p however 24 hours is a bit long to my mind, maybe 1 hour would be enough from the time the user logs in and sees the gift ?