How to Claim Land

Introduction
Land claims are protected from griefers and mob damage. Land claiming requires claim blocks, which can be earned while playing the game or by supporting the server.

Claiming land with a Golden Shovel
You can create a land claim by right clicking two corners of land with a Golden Shovel. This will create a rectangular land claim that protects everything from top to bottom. If you'd like to use your golden shovel as a normal shovel, simply run the /claimtool command. Run the command a second time to enable again.

You can also switch between 3 different "Claim Modes" using the commands below:

Basic Claims Mode: /basicclaims
This is the default land claim mode, most of your claims will be made using this mode. Don't forget to switch back after using ther other claim mode options. Claims created in this mode will use up claim blocks.

Subdivision Claim Mode: /subdivideclaims
Subdivision mode allows you to create claims within your claim, useful if you want to grant specific permissions for a particular plot inside of your claim. Does not use claim blocks.

Town Claim Mode: /townclaims
You can be the mayor of your own town by creating a town claim. Once created, use subdivion mode to create plots & invite your residents. This mode uses claim blocks, everyone gets 1 town claim.

Claim Blocks and how to collect them
By default, everyone earns 90 claim blocks for every hour of gameplay, until you reach a default cap of 10,000 claim blocks. And this is not 90 blocks an hour by letting the game run over night, you have to play the game to start accruing claim blocks. The server gives you 200 claim blocks when you first join and an aditional 200 bonus claim blocks for your first /vote. Keep voting to earn more bonus claim blocks, or you can purchase them in bulk at the store.
View your claim block information with the command: /playerinfo

Switching between 2D and 3D land claim modes (supporters only)

You'll notice while holding the shovel, your action bar will say something like "2D Basic Claim Mode". On this server, you can create 2D or 3D claims using the /cuboid command while holding a Golden Shovel.
3D claims are similar to 2D claims except for the fact that by default, 2D mode will claim the entire Y axis of your claim. If you'd prefer to have more control over the Y axis, you'll need to claim in 3D mode.

Your action bar should say which mode you are in.
Once in 3D mode, right click a block for your first claim corner. However, unlike 2D mode, you're going to want to create a cube between your first right click and your second right click.

Resizing claims with commands

Expand your claim using the command: /claimexpand #
Contract your claim using the command /claimcontract #
Both claim expand and claim contract impact the claim in the direction you are facing. Must be standing inside of the claim you want to make changes to when running these commands.

How to abandon your land claims
You can delete existing land claims and recollect your claim blocks using the following commands:

/abandonclaim
Run this command while standing inside of the basic claim, town claim or subdivision you'd like to delete
/abandontop
Run this command if you need to delete a claim and its subdivisions. Must be standing inside of the claim, and not the subdivision, unless you're attempting to delete a subdivision within a subdivision.
/abandonallclaims
Run this command to abandon all of your claims. Useful if you want to redo your entire claim setup. Staff cannot undo this.

Finding nearby land claims with Claim Inspect
Don't remember where you placed that land claim? Unsure if what you're looking at is claimed by someone else? Well you can inspect that block you're looking at to see if it's claimed by right clicking it with a stick.

Alternatively, you can run the command: /claiminspect

Granting access to your claims
You can give your friends and fellow crafters permission to access or build in your claims.

To do so, stand inside of the claim and run the command: /trust (player|public)
To un-trust someone from a claim, stand inside of it and type: /untrust (player|public)
To trust someone (or everyone) on all of your claims, type: /trustall (player|public)
To undo the trustall command above, run the command: /untrustall (player|public)

To view a list of trusted players, type: /trustlist

If you want to trust a specific person, enter their minecraft name at the end of the command, for example if you wanted to trust me for example, you would type /trust vnvxvnv. Or, if you wanted to trust everyone, you would type /trust public. If you want to trust me on all of your claims, you can type /trustall vnvxvnv. And since this command impacts all of your claims, you can just run this where ever.

Advanced trust permissions
You can be more specific with your trust permissions by taking advantage of the following commands:

/trust (player|public) accessor
grants access to interact with all blocks, except for inventory blocks.
/trust (player|public) container
Grants access to interact with all blocks, including inventory blocks.
/trust (player|public) builder
Grants access to everything above, including the ability to place or break things.
/trust (player|public) manager
Grants access to everything above, including the ability to modify a claim

Manage your claims with the Claims List
There's really no limit to the amount of claims you can create, so it should be no surprise that eventually things will get out of hand. Fortunately it's very easy to view and manage all of your land claims in one simple to use GUI.

Access the Claims List with the command: /claimslist

Claim Display Names
You can also create a display name for your land claims to help keep things more organized. This Display name also shows in a player's action bar every time they enter your claim, so be sure to make it something nice.

Change the display name of a claim by standing inside of it and typing: /claimdisplayname (claim name)

Upon entering your claim, a player's action bar will show your claim name as this: (your name)'s (claim displayname)

Create greeting and farewell messages
Your claim display name is useful for organizing your land claims in your Claims List, but what if you prefer the greeting message in the action bar to be something else? Well you can completely customize your greeting message and override your displayname, and you can even set a farewell message to display in the action bar once a player exits your claim.

To set a claim greeting message, stand inside of it and type: /claimgreeting (greeting message)
To set a claim farewell message, stand inside of it and type: /claimfarewell (farewell message)
You are expect to keep these messages appropriate for all ages and cultures.

Transfer claims with the Transfer Claim command
It's Important to note that you do not get your claim blocks back when you do this. It also does not cost the reciever any claim blocks, you're essentially gifting them the land claim. This does not increase their claim block count.

You can transfer your land claim to another player by standing inside of it and running the command: /claimtransfer (player)

Transfer pets with the Give Pet command
You can transfer a protected pet to another player.
To do so, run the command: /givepet (player)
Simply follow the prompts in chat to finish the transfer.

Do more with the Claim command Advanced claim modifications
The Land Claim Menu lets you manage many claim related things such as your player info and your trust list, as well as the ability to modify Claim Flags, which are basically claim specific modifications. An example of a claim flag would be something that allows claim explosions or PvP in the claim you're standing on.

To manage claim flags, run the following command: /claim

Click the Claim Flag category, select User and then choose a group. Public means the flags you enable/disable will impact everyone, and Player flags will only affect you or trusted players. The Claim command is useful for more than just claim flags and can also be used to view claim block information and /gd commands, which is  Grief Defender's default command for all things related to the plugin.