I wouldn't trust YT. They recently deplatformed a very influential Hive developer @leofinance.
There is a wealth of documentation out there but the question would be what precisely you are trying to accomplish. I have dabbled with the Hive API a lot in the past but it's generally not needed for the end user as there are tools designed to take that burden off your shoulders.
I tend to be the stubborn type and think my autocurator is down as I run it from my own server and eventually it requires restart. You don't have to worry about that mess. Set up idle curation voting on https://hive.vote.
You can also share your fanbase link in your blog like this and invite your regulars to support.
These tools really help and highly recommend your consider voting for @mahdiyari as a witness for maintaining them.
As far as accumulating and powering up Hive, I use Bittrex personally and the @ecency interface to power it up.
Let me know if you need any help or have specific questions
Thanks so much, this is exactly the kind of info I was after.
I did join the rising star curation trail as I play that game a bit too now. After a few days it hadn't voted on anything so not sure if it hadn't worked or I'm just impatient.
Why did youtube remove @leofinance? I'll check that out.
My main reason for posting initially is my voting value is 0% and I thought it would stay there until I do something to kick start it. Now I have staked some hive it should rise I think?
Ill have a look at @ecency
Thanks again for helping