Philosophy

First, a little philosphy. This site is built using "Plone":http://plone.org , which is a content management system. There are a few basic concepts to master.

Users -- There are two kinds of users. **Anonymous** users are those who have not logged in. **Authenticated** users have logged in. Only authenticated users may create, add, or edit things on the site.  Anyone may become an authenticated user by joining and logging in. Joining is easy. There's a join link in the "log in" box and another in the navigation bar.

Roles -- Users can have one or more roles. Once you have logged in, you are a **Member**. You are the **Owner** of anything you create. Authenticated users may create things in their own folders. You can get to your folder from the navigation bar once you have logged in. Content you create is not fully visible to every one until it is published.  You publish things by submitting them (See *Workflow*, below). A **Reviewer** can approve things you have submitted. A **Manager** can also publish things like a reviewer and also can control all other aspects of the site. **Group roles** can be assigned by the manager so that members can be managers of subsections of the site.

Groups -- Each Technical Working Group is assigned a Group identity. TWG members can be assigned to the portal groups corresponding to their TWG groups and can thus be allowed to manage content in the TWG folders.


Workflow -- There's a separate help document on Workflow with the details. Basically, things you create start out in the **Visible** state, meaning that anyone can see them but they don't appear in any of the navigation tools. You can either **Submit** an item or make it **Private**. Submitting it puts it into a reviewers' queue. Making it private means only you can see it. Reviewers are notified of things they should review. A reviewer can **Reject**, **Publish**, or **Retract** an item. Only items that are published are visible in the navigation elements of the site. However, even items that are only visible and not published can be found via a search. If you really don't want someone to see something (maybe it's an interim version), make it private.

Structured Text -- When you are editing documents, you can use either Plain Text, HTML, or Structured Text. So far, all of the documents in this Help section are written in Structured Text. Here is a good web page that describes "structured text":http://plone.org/documentation/howto/UsingStructuredText


If all else fails, go to the "Plone Book":http://plone.org/documentation/book for the latest Plone documentation.