Welcome^^
I fell we are quite alike as I also only recntly joined and never went online with NL before. I went to a few towns of my friends in WW but thats it. WW was my first Ac game so I never tried population growing.
As a person who is afraid of messing up and interacting with stragers, I have to say I?m pleasantly surprised with this community. It?s not as bad to get started as I thought it would be and I haven?t had any bad experienced with people on this site yet. I sometimes went on certain forums, some of which had really impolite comments, as a visitor to look things up. Here, I see dedicated adults that take the game seriously, rather than making mean comments about others.
So based on my limited experience, I think you will enjoy it here.^^
I found it espechially nice that I can now finaly trade with others, which makes some items much much easier to obtain.
Many people here purchase things using TBT (bells) which you get by posting, so just by being active you get enough money to trade for everything you could want (items, villagers, helpers).
There always some people online, so if you ever need assistance, items or advice, there will surely be someone to help you^^
Some things I noticed so far that might help you:
- edit your profile and add your 3ds friend code, it will show up under your profile picture whenever you post so you don?t have to write it down every time you need it. Pretty much everyone does that. So if you ever trade with someone but they didn?t give you their code: it?s on the sidebar^^
- You don?t get notified when people quote you. So if you want people to reply (e.g. in a selling-thead), just like their post. they will get a notice about your like under "notifications"
- If you click on "settings" at the top, you will get a list of threads that you are subscribed to (you made them, manually subscribed or posted in them), so you can easily see whats new and follow a topic
- everyone has a feedback section in their profile so make sure you leave some when you visited someone, they visited you, you traded etc.
I've played all of the main Animal Crossing games, except for City Folk. Stella was my best friend in Population Growing, so I was thrilled when the Welcome Amiibo cards were released. I have every card: 400 Amiibo, 50 Welcome Amiibo, and 6 Sanrio! I've actually never played online with anyone else, except for my sister and brother. I'm so happy to be here. 
