How to make a Clangen RP?

the coding is done in HTML. It's not too hard to learn to make a basic layout yourself, and there might be some people willing to code one for you if you ask around on the art forum. I don't think that's a horribly important step, having a coded layout is mostly for polish? So long as your information is easy to navigate and clearly marked, you don't really need to have something fancy.

The first step for me was figuring out how, in practice, I wanted the flow of the roleplay to go. What information was I going to give the players each moon? How long would it take to run an update in that format? How many times a week was I willing to run those updates?

I balanced my mechanics off of how long I wanted each update to take. More information, more mechanics = more time invested. This is also why I have rather strict rules on what can be file edited/rolled back: I COULD put in a lot of time file editing, but that would burn me out quick and then the Clan wouldn't be at its best.

A lot of making a roleplay is figuring out what, exactly, you want it to accomplish, what you want your player experience to be like, and how much time you're willing to put into the roleplay to make it succeed. It unfortunately doesn't run on its own: every moon, I have to do the moon updates (30-60mins) update any front page work that needs to be done (anywhere from 5mins to 30 depending on if any cats joined, were born, or died) and check in on inactive members (maybe 20m a week checking for activity and marking off who hasn't replied at all; then maybe another 20 on bad weeks to either send DMs, extra pings, ect) and then there's keeping track of hiatuses and making sure all the Clangen stuff is running well (file editing every once in a while to make sure no cats hate each other, nudging relationships to reward good roleplay moments ect)

And that all factored into the mechanics of the roleplay. You can definitely do less than I do and be successful, but you'll probably also need to simplify the mechanics or information given to maintain clarity and accessibility.

if all that makes sense? I just kinda rambled about the first few steps I went through and the choices I made when deciding what YewClan was going to look like.

There are other models, namely claim-a-cat rps on the Clangen discord; you can check some of those out if you want inspiration on an alternate model. I looked at those extensively to see what mechanics worked for them, which were hard to implement, and what players liked to see (having cat icons was a very positive feature!). Doing a bit of research over there could help you figure out what you'd like your rp to look like.