changing starting room

Question 1: How do I change the room new players start in? I'd like to use one of my own areas as the beginning room.

Question 2: When i use the area editor to make an area, when i save, it makes a ARE file and a BAK file. I get an error message when I try to open the ARE file, something like "expected a number" then another that says "error occured at line 50". (I get the same error messages when I try to open the ARE files that came with Smaug) I can open the BAK file, but any changes I make to it don't show up in the game. So... What's the BAK file for, and what's that error message about when loading ARE files? Any feedback would be appreciated.

Whoops, sorry about posting the same thread twice, AOL is freaking out on me.

I don't think the Area Editor makes BAK files - I suggest your text editor or word processor is doing that.

The BAK file is a backup copy of an area, usually made when someone attempts to renumbar an area via perl script or another potentially fatal modification to an area file. They could also just be remnants of an old backup system incase a file corrupted due to acsii art or whatever.