What does a guild need to know when they're beginning to raid?

Getting a kill to "count" toward guild boss kills is a subjective thing, especially by the game's own standards. World of Warcraft currently does not track boss kills by guild, it tracks them individually by player. Many sites that keep track of boss kill progression look for Armory updates with achievements and update guild progress if most or all of the guild was present for the first kill. Others track based on what gear you wear that drops from certain bosses and logs presence at a boss kill the first time it sees you've equipped it. (The details may differ and sites uses multiple techniques but this is the general idea.) Since it's tracked via Armory, you don't need to self report although some sites allow you to add your guild to a queue for scanning if you want faster results than their Armory crawler provides.

Let me emphasize that as a guild venturing into 10-man raids for the first time, you should not let this concern you!! Your role is to get your guild geared up and ready. You shouldn't worry about what some website says your progression rate is - it's subjective and not tracked by the game in any way. Its only purpose is to see how you measure up against other guilds. World of Warcraft does not track this and you have no obligation to either. I believe GuildOx is one of the more popular sites these days for checking progression. Feel free to look yourself up there sometime and see what I mean.

Usually it's done by sites scraping the armory. At this point in the game, you're pretty much going to be the bottom of the "server first" barrel. That's ok. The key thing is keeping everyone together and happy. Most slow-goers find the transition to raiding fairly brutal.

There are many poswsible answers to your question. It all depends upon which site you plan on using to track your progress. GuildOx tends to be the most popular site that tracks guild proggress, however WowProgress and WowJustsu are a couple of other popular ones. Below is information from their sites that show how they track progress (Rather than post all of the information and take up your entire screen, I will post the links.) :

GUILDOX: http://www.guildox.com/go/g.asp?w=AB

WoWProgress: http://www.wowprogress.com/post/31_Frequently_Asked_Questions

WOWJUTSU: http://www.wowjutsu.com/faq.html

First is how do we get our boss kills to count toward guild boss kills?

For tracking Boss Kills or raid achievements many guilds/servers also use WoW Heroes.

Do we need to have a full guild group for bosses to count or is it an overall percent of the group that needs to be guild members?

This is a two part question.

Part 1 - On the WoW Heroes site is a comprehensive set of requirements for a guild to be able to "Claim" a Boss Kill or Raid Clear. We have used their requirements (altered just a bit to suit our guild) to keep track of our guilds progress. (Such as 10 man raids, must consist of at least 7 guild members including 1 officer in order to be eligible for guild claim. 25 mans must consist of at least 16 18 guild members and include 2 officers. But, this came about over time as we are very casual about raiding.)

Part 2 - As for needing a full group, there are many achievements in the game at this time for Downing a Raid Boss with less than a full group, Example-Less IS More and many are fun to do. However, until they can be trying on a group new to the raid. I would suggest, taking a look through the achievement list and if your group is up for it, picking one to have a go at. If it doesn't work, never fear, you can still finish the raid normally, and be proud to have tried.

Do we have to self report (where?) or is it counted somewhere like armory/ wow heros where we can see our over all progression?

On the WoW Heroes website, you or an officer of your guild must report any raid progression yourselves. The site will check it against your wow armory achievements and update your rank in the server list.

As Xythan above said, please do not focus on progression, its a game of cat and mouse that is almost always frustrating. Watching your guild climb several ranks, only to drop several more can be disheartening to say the least. However, there is a sense of pride the first time you see your guilds name in a ranking system. Raid because you like playing with your friends and guild mates, Raid for fun, and for the loot and you cant go wrong.

yeah would agree with these guys. As the guild leader of a casual guild I know how interesting it can be to move from 5mans to looking at raids. Main thing is keep it fun, personally if I was just starting out I would probably try to get into some pugs so I can get the experience of the fight and some of the gear. Forget about guild firsts or anything like that just go for the experience.

And hey from the pugs you may find a few people that would be interested in joining your guild so that you can have the 10 people to field your own raids and get the joyous experience of taking down the boss all by yourself.

As a former raid leader for a guild, I can answer each one of your questions.

First is how do we get our boss kills to count toward guild boss kills?

Register your guild to a guild ranking website. Examples are either Guildox (I recommend Guildox to be honest) or WoWProgress

Do we need to have a full guild group for bosses to count or is it an overall percent of the group that needs to be guild members?

Depends on the website:

For Guildox, it will register boss kills if at least 8 guild members have the 10 man achievement (regardless of date achieved). It will also register 25 man kills if at least 15 guild members have the achievement (regardless of when.) Also, you need at least 20 characters in your guild to qualify for rankings (those other members can be non 80s and/or alts if you wish.)

For WoWProgress, I'm not so sure how many you would need to register a boss kill.

Do we have to self report (where?) or is it counted somewhere like armory/ wow heros where we can see our over all progression?

The website should automatically update information on boss kills based on Armory statistics.