Most of the sites we link to are WikiDot sites. They don't exclusively have to be, though. In the past, before they migrated to wikidot, the Polish wiki used another site. The SCP-CN site previously used the WikiDot software, to imitate the look and feel of the site, without actually using the WikiDot servers. Now, we strongly recommend that you use a WikiDot site because, despite its limitations, it is the easiest way to make sure members of the community can seamlessly flow from our site to yours.
When you first make your site, I personally recommend that you make it open for anyone to join. It might suffer from trolling or bad users, but it's the easiest way to make your community grow. Just make it so that only moderators can delete things, and you'll most likely be fine.
If you use a WikiDot site, you will also be able to copy and edit our theme. If you look at some of our hubs from the Groups Of Interest Contest, they have some heavily edited CSS. You should be able to make the minor alterations to your theme, in order to make it fit your site. If you have any trouble with it, contact our technical team for assistance.
You can copy all of our code for the SCP Series pages, as well as any other technical pages you wish to use in order to imitate the look and feel of the main Foundation site. For those hub pages, just go to the "page source" option at the bottom of the page, and copy what you see. If you wish the use our theme, then check out This Page.
There is also a detailed guide on How to create a branch of the SCP-Foundation.
The most obvious standard is to have a number of content, whether it be translations or original SCP content. For translation-specific communities, usually getting most of the top rated pages along with some lesser-known articles is enough. You must also have at least a small amount of original SCP-related content. This can be a small number, as long as it demonstrates that your community will be creating more original content into the future.
In addition, in order to get your site linked from our pages we need for you to have a demonstrable community. This can be decided on a case by case basis, but generally if you can get more than a handful of people working on your site, then you're probably going to be fine in this respect. However, if your community is made up of people who are primarily members of other SCP communities who only work on your site as a side project, that can be problematic.
If you do all of this, then you will have something that we value most- time and effort put into building the community. If you have a demonstrable effort put into your translations, site structure, and community, then you will be able to get through this step with ease. If, on the other hand, you have a carbon-copy of our wiki with translations done through google translate, we might have a bad time.
If you're not doing a translation site, the main things we're going to be looking for is quality assurance and originality. Quality assurance means that you need to have good content. This is highly subjective, and will definitely be decided on a case by case basis. A rejection based on quality isn't a permanent rejection, it just means that you need to improve your site content. You may be able to ask site members to help you with that, but they are in no way obligated to help you.
If you're doing a site based on a GoI or any other aspect of the universe, it needs to have an original conceit that isn't just "write articles and tales like SCP, with some differences in formatting". If your content could easily be mistaken for an SCP with odd formatting, you're not doing it correctly. You can look at some of the entries from the Groups Of Interest Contest for some ideas on how to make your idea original.
Once your site is linked, you will be added to the SCP International(linked) wiki, which allows you to communicate with all other officially recognized SCP sites. In addition, you will be linked from our links page and the front page. Your top admins will be listed, and we will change the listing if your roster of administrators changes.
In addition, you will be given access to resources such as the SCP Foundation social media pages. We will be happy to make posts and announcements on your behalf, as long as it doesn't interfere with our regularly scheduled broadcasts. This is a privilege based on a mutually cooperative relationship between our communities, so please do not assume your community is entitled to a blank check in regards to social media promotion. Other resources, such as official announcements on our forums, will be treated in the same way.
Thank you for your interest in the SCP community, and we wish you and your communities the best!
