•The Basics•

•What, exactly, is Serenity Isles?•
At the core Serenity is just another Chatlands Chat, which is a 2D graphical chat.  If you’ve been around Chatlands, or similar chatsites, then you already know what it is, if you’re new, well…

•Okay, so what’s a “2D graphical chat”?•
2D graphical chats have a visual element that normal web-based chats lack.  You are “represented” by a small image of your character, which you are able to move across a room’s background. This image is usually called an avatar or a pose and can be anything!

•Anything?•
That’s right! You can be anything here at Serenity, we don’t limit you to only certain animal species, or to animals at all!  While our default pose sets are animals, your custom avatars can be anything you’d like, whether that’s an animal, a human, an inanimate object.

•How much does all this cost?•
Absolutely nothing.  Using the basic chat is free and all of our bodyshop sets are free as well.  If you want to use custom poses, or upload your own private rooms, you’ll need to purchase deltas and then select a subscription.
A basic subscription runs about $2 per month and an Ultimate is about $10 per month, to give you an idea of costs.

•The Community•

•I’m not sure I’ll fit in…•
Why not?  A lot of people think you need to be a Furry, a Therian or Otherkin, etc., to be a part of the chat, but this simply is not true.  Several of our users are not a part of these communities and still love Serenity.
If you’re afraid you’ll be discriminated against for other reasons, such as gender identity or sexual orientation, please remember that Serenity is focused on promoting respect of others (and yourself).  If you are being harassed or bullied please bring it to the attention of a staff member as soon as possible, we do not tolerate this behavior in our community.
Serenity prides itself in being a diverse community staffed by open-minded, diverse Administrators.

•Focused on Respect?•
The first rule of Serenity is to treat others as you wish to be treated; that is, to respect everyone you encounter on the chat.  We take this one step further and promote, not only respect of others, but of yourself and nature as well.

•What’s the deal with the age limits?•
Our chat is basically broken into 3 areas, 13+, 14+, and 17+.  While Serenity was originally for users over 17, we chose to open it to those 14 and older, and from there lowered the age limit by one year.  We left the 17+ rooms as they were, to ensure our older members had a getaway, but also left most of our rooms 14+.  This may seem strange, but we have our reasons for it and haven’t encountered any problems so far, in fact most members like it this way.

•Is chatting all you can do here?•
Nope! While the chat certainly is the main attraction, Serenity has various other community activities available.  At the moment we currently offer community forums, an oekaki board, and an artist market.  Through the forums we host other events and activities, so we’re usually always doing things to build the community.
Currently we are working on adding new things for our users to enjoy, if you ever have any suggestion please let us know!

•Am I allowed to Roleplay (RP) here?•
You sure are!  We currently have a few public rooms available on the chat for roleplaying, as well as public forums for this as well.  If this isn’t enough, feel free to upload your own private rooms for your roleplaying needs.
We ask that you respect other users and refrain from roleplaying in any public (or private) rooms that do not say they are for RP.
At the moment all our RP rooms are 13+, if we get asked, though, we will make RP rooms available in the 17+ areas as well.

•What’s available for those 17 or older?•
The chat was originally created for users older than 17.  Obviously, this has changed but we still offer areas for our older audience to get away from it all, kick back, and let loose, without having to worry about their language or topics of discussion.  Not only do we have rooms available on the chat for our older users, we also have a special area of the forums for them as well.

•Experiencing Technical Difficulties•

•I broke it•
GEE THANKS!

•I’m having trouble getting into the chat!•
This could be for a number of reasons.  Make sure you have the most up to date version of Flash, which you can find here: Adobe Flash website.  If you have some kind of firewall installed, (most schools and some business networks have this sort of protection), then that could be blocking Serenity.  Also, try clearing out your cache and cookies through your browser’s internet options. Currently, the chat works best in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome.
If you are still having trouble accessing the chat please go to the Technical Support Forum and see if someone had a similar problem before you, if not then post what issue you are having (be sure to include your web-browser and OS! Screenshots help us out too).

•I found a bug, what should I do?•
Release it outside.
If you encounter a problem on the chat, please let us know!  You can fill out a “problem ticket” here.
When reporting a bug or technical problem be sure to include, in detail, what was going on when the problem occurred, as well as your browser version (FF 4.1 for example) and your OS (windows vista for example).

•Administration•

•The staff here is intimidating•
We really hope you don’t think so :[
As stated, respect is key to this community; if you feel an administrator is disrespecting you, you have options available.  You can report them to a staff member who is superior to them, or skip the line and report them directly to Teetonka or Linaeve, the owners of the chat.  If either of the owners are causing you trouble you can also report them to Underdog, the owner of Chatlands.
We also have Admin Feedback forms open for anonymous submission.  This allows our staff to know what they’re doing well and where they can make improvements.  Feedback left for the entire team is posted in our staff forums while individual feedback is discussed between the staff member in question and an owner.

•Who’s who?•
You can check out descriptions of our ranking system, as well as a list of current administrators, right here.

•I called an admin but they didn’t ban anyone!•
Fortunately, or unfortunately for some, our Peace Keepers are not “chat police” who will enter a room, bring down the ban hammer, and then disappear into the night.  Instead our administrators try to act as mediators to help users work past differences or, if the users refuse to tolerate one another peacefully, to encourage users to ignore one another.
We try to avoid banning users here, hoping that our users will do their best to ensure that Serenity remains a peaceful place.  If a user continues to disturb the peace we may be forced to ban them for a short time, but we will not ban users over personal disagreements or a problem that can be easily corrected.

•Your rules are dumb and hard to follow•
Sorry :c
We don’t think our rules are too hard to follow, as every rule comes back to the golden rule.  So long as you respect others you’ll get along fine here.

•Can I be a staff member?•
We typically only add staff through applications, which are only open when we have positions to fill.  Any time we open applications we will make announcements on the chat, the forum, and on the homepage.

•Pleeeeaaase??  I’m really experienced•
If you’re sure you’d be a good fit for our team, be sure to fill out an application whenever they open!