A few pieces of advice

• Do not systematically sign or authenticate your friends' keys. This is an irrevocable operation that means you are sure that the key belongs to whoever presented it to you.

• Use the appropriate RetroShare forums for key exchanges. If you don't have a "key exchange" forum in your list, ask your friends if they can subscribe to it (so you'll get access to it), and wait for the cache files to be transfered.

• Do not create new forums if appropriate ones already exist. It will take a few hours or days before you get all forums and channels from your friends.

• Subscribe to forums and channels you like. This will make them available to your friends, you'll be able to post inside them (in forums at least — channels tend to be "locked"), and you will be notified of new messages.

• Keep RetroShare running even when you're not downloading files: this is needed for your friends to access the network and for all users to get files and forum/channel posts.

• Keep sharing files you've downloaded for as long as possible. This helps with download speeds and files availability.

• Avoid sharing files publicly unless you know and trust all your friends.

• Check your “Messages” from time to time. If the icon turn red, then you've got mail from a friend!

• Make regular backups of your RetroShare data directory (“Data” in RetroShare portable for Windows, “~/.retroshare” under Linux.)

• Be patient and persistent! It takes a few weeks to build a solid network of friends and learn how to use RetroShare.

• Install RetroShare updates when they become available on the official web site. The developers are constantly working on improvements and each new version fixes past problems.