Postcrossing newbie here. Hello 
I do believe I’ve found my people and I cant believe I didnt know the Postcrossing world even existed a few months ago.
Can somebody please explain to me what all the badges mean and how you get them? I see a lot in the forum about World Postcrossing Day (October 1) but the other badges on profiles are harder to find info on. What are the distance badges about? Thanks
You can open this link
Others than WPD and postcrossing ambassador you may also notice two others icons showing the image of postcard and kilometers.
You will get them if you are on top 100 in your country in terms of total postcard sent and total long distance.
Have a look here, too, @Calisunshine.
Here you can find many instructions, how to use the forum!
Welcome, @Calisunshine!
Related, I think, regard the WPD badges - I see people talking about timing and having to pull addresses at certain times on WPD. Can anyone share about that? I want to be sure to keep slots open this year and I don’t want to miss it because of a technicality 
It’s about drawning an address on Oktober 1st, in your timezone. You might save a few open slots some wweks ahead, as only a registered card will get someone the WPD bagde.
In the current time zone! That helps, thank you!
Usually it is the time zone that Postcrossing is in which is UTC 0:00
eg my location is 9:5 hours ahead of Postcrossing so I always wait until it is after 9:30am in my country before requesting addresses.
On WPD your own timezone counts:
Can you please clarify what’s the correct way to do it to get the WPC badge?
@KimberlyOR I’m not sure anyone entirely knows lol. From what I’ve gathered if you request a new address under send a card on October 1st you’ll earn the badge. I guess the first year they did it the address had to be pulled in the UTC time zone. After that I believe they added your local time zones to count for the badge too. Im just gonna keep a couple slots open as the date gets close just incase.
I think this is the way to do it Thank you!
Requesting an address isn’t enough to earn the WPD badge, the card has to be delivered in order to get the badge. I’d recommend to keep a few slots and draw more than one address in case the card is lost.
Your current or Postcrossing’s time zones count
To summarise all:
You have to draw at least one address on 1 October (your own timezone) - but it is recommended that you draw more than one address - and at least one of these cards has to be registered.
Great advice! Thank you!
Exactly this. It changed after the first year, so your time zone has counted in subsequent years. And of course, as has been said above, one of your cards drawn on 1 October, has to be registered before you get the badge.
For this year (2023) with the mail delivery seeming especially slow in many locations worldwide, how early does the group think we should keep slots open if we want to be sure to send a few postcards on WPD to earn the WPD badge? I’m thinking maybe 60 days? I’m definitely getting postcards within my country registered quicker than that, but you never know what country you’ll pull (and even US to US cards are taking a while).
Any thoughts? You can tell I really want this badge
I wouldn’t draw any addresses from 1 september until I had as many free slots as I wanted to draw addresses at WPD.
Also this year there is a limit of 10 addresses per member only on 1 October.
