Playing my first game

Okay, I've put my foot in the water and issued a daily chess 15/10 challenge.  Someone accepted and I made a move and he made a move.  What do I do now?  Do I wait until tomorrow to make my next move?

Is there a way for me to communicate with my opponent to tell him how green I am?  What if I get disconnected for some reason?  Is there a way to get back into the game?  

A 15/10 time control means you start with 15 minutes on your clock and gain 10 seconds per move.

Okay, I got a notification saying he won because I had abandoned the game, but the time clock was only down to 7:31.  I also thought I only had to make one move per day, so why was the time clock even operative (or didn't have 24:00:00)?

Okay, I thought because 15/10 was next to daily chess that it was an option for daily chess (even though that makes no sense now that I think about it).

I've now hit "1 Day" and have a page that says "Archive" .

Just to be clear: daily chess does not mean you have to make a movement once a day. You can make moves a soon as you like but each player must make their move within the time limit. So in a 1 day daily game you have 24 hours to make your move before you time out. Typically people select 3 day games but make moves much more frequently than that. 

Obviously, I have more money than chess experience but it is the interface I'm not familiar with.

Thanks, havelock3.  I have two games going, I think.  I'm white in one and made a move which was responded to.  But I'm black in the other and nothing has happened with white yet.  I guess he has 24 hours to make a move. (?)

It is exactly because some doesn't know what 15|10 is that they would get membership. The membership is perfect for people new to chess. We all have to start somewhere. 

Yes, exactly. 

Somewhere in the Help section it says:

"The difference between online chess and live chess is that, with online games, you can log out of the site, and your online game will still be there when you come back.   It's easy to see why people often play many online games at once!"

This only makes sense to me if by "online" they mean "daily".  Is that what was meant?

Most of my 3 day/move games have a few or more moves per day.  In one pair of team games I have now, my opponent is playing 172 simultaneous daily games and only moves when he has less than 10 hours left.  You have to be prepared for things like that and whether you're challenging or playing a random opponent you might want to set it for one day/move, but if you might be getting away from it all for a weekend, etc. and don't want to take chess.com vacation time, 3 days/move means you'd have 1 move max. over the weekend.

It is easier to just remember that "live" chess means playing in real time so that in the sentence above "online" would mean turn-based games where you can go away and come back later to make your next move. People have various terms for online modes of play but "live" seems to be used universally to mean the same thing. 

Also keep in mind that the vast majority of people play "live" chess (particularly blitz and bullet which are games of 10 minutes or less) and so in the forums when people talk about chess and their games they are nearly always talking about live chess. I always find this throws me off because I currently only play daily games. 

Also another term for daily chess (daily chess I think is more a chess.com term) is "correspondence" chess from the days when people used the postal service to send their moves to each other, before the internet and email.