Mapleshade's Defense Attorney

How does AO3 work? What is and isn’t allowed?

My first recommendation for new users is always to skim the Terms of Service FAQ. It explains what AO3 allows and why in plain, straightforward terms. AO3 does not allow placeholder works, commercial content such as commissions links, or “work search” posts.

How can I change the look of the site?

The appearance of AO3 is very customizable! If you just want a basic dark mode, scroll down to the bottom of any page and click “Reversi” under the Customize menu. For more advanced customizations, I can’t recommend @ao3commentoftheday enough. They have so many gorgeous tutorials for everything from site skins to making the site’s content filters do whatever you want.

Wattpad users may especially appreciate the Floating Comment Box extension, which makes commenting on AO3 work slightly more like Wattpad.

How does AO3 search work?

This handy guide by @backofthebookshelf covers the basics. Here is a cheatsheet with more advanced searching tricks.

I’m ready to post my own works. How do I add [specific thing]?

With a little bit of HTML, you can do some incredibly neat things in an AO3 work. Here’s the website running Doom. Here is a very comprehensive guide to Limited HTML on AO3. It may look intimidating at first, but you can get a lot done by copying and pasting and paying attention to the results. As a fun bonus, check out the rest of the series, which includes step by step instructions for making your fic look like text messages on a phone screen, newspaper articles, sticky notes, and more.

Why is Wattpad doing this now? Have similar things happened before?

Fandom creatives have been outrunning purges and legal threats for a long time. Here is a comprehensive timeline of fandom purges and legal actions taken against fanworks, from 1977 to the present day. Here is another timeline written by @olderthannetfic, with associated commentary from other fans.

Purges on LiveJournal and other sites circa 2007 influenced the founding of AO3. You can read in detail about the circumstances of its founding and the construction of the policies it abides by today here.