okay so i just got my technician license about three weeks ago and ive been trying to get into the local 2m repeater but nobody seems to hear me. i can hear other people talking on it just fine, comes in clear, but when i key up nobody responds and i dont really know if im even hitting it.

someone at the club meeting told me i need to program a CTCSS tone but i thought that was only so i dont hear other traffic, not for transmitting? or maybe i had that backwards. my radio is a baofeng uv-5r and i have the tone set to 100hz on receive but i dont think i ever set the transmit tone. is that the problem or is there something else going on. also the repeater listed on repeaterbook shows a plus offset which i have set, so i think the frequency side is right at least.

sorry if this is a dumb question, still figuring all this out

Not a dumb question at all, this trips up a lot of new folks. So yeah you had it backwards - the CTCSS tone on receive is called a tone squelch (or sometimes called CTCSS squelch), and that just stops your radio from opening up unless it hears that specific tone from the repeater. That's optional and mostly a personal preference thing.

What you actually need to get INTO the repeater is setting the transmit tone, sometimes labeled as T-CTCSS or just encode on some radios. The repeater has a controller that wont open up unless it receives that specific subaudible tone from you along with your signal. Without it you could be hitting the machine just fine RF-wise but it'll ignore you completely, which is exactly what it sounds like is happening.

On a uv-5r it can be a little confusing because the menu has separate settings for transmit and receive tone. Pull up menu item 13 (T-DCS) or look for the one labeled CTCSS and make sure you're setting the transmit side. 100hz is a pretty common tone so you're probably just one menu away from being good to go.

yeah what the other guy said, was gonna add though - once you do get on there just give your callsign and say you're listening or whatever, dont need to say much. some repeaters have kind of an unwritten thing where people dont necessarily respond to random kerchunks or quick transmissions without a callsign so if you're just keying up to test without identifying that might also be part of why nobody came back to you. just something i noticed when i was new too lol