Items

Items are the basic building blocks of the application. They come in different types - each type has different properties and different functionality. Some of the more commonly used types are Folders and Files, however, there are many others which are detailed below. Some other commonly used Items are Polls, Discussions, Tasks, Events and Databases.

Items are nested beneath other Items. The application can be thought of as a tree with Items representing branches and leaves. A more familiar metaphor might be of a file system which can be explored through a graphical interface. Users of Windows will be familiar with Windows Explorer which offers a hierarchical view of the file system. The application does the same, except that the range of Items is much more diverse than the standard File and Folder.

Properties

Nearly all Items share the same basic set of properties. The properties define what an Item is.

Title

The title of the Item. It appears as the heading for the Item page.

Description

A short description of the Item. It appears at the top of the page below the heading and is also supplied to search engines when they are indexing the site.

Location

The unique name given to the Item. Each Item has a unique path which is used as an address in the system: the url of the Item. The Location must be unique amongst its sibling Items. This ensures that no two Items will have the same address. Generally the Location will be similar to the Title, except that it has no spaces or non alphanumeric characters, however, sometimes the Location will be generated by the system.

Owner

The Member who owns the Item. Each Item is owned by a Member. Initially the Owner is set to the person who created the Item. The Owner has write permissions over the Item and can therefore set up permissions.

Icon

The icon of the Item. When a Item is created an appropriate icon is associated with the Item. It can the be subsequently edited.

Content Type

The type of Content of the Item. Items can have a large amount of textual Content which can be of type "HTML" or "TEXT". The system includes a HTML editor that can generate Rich HTML content. The HTML editor also allows the user to manually edit the HTML source. Alternatively plain TEXT can be displayed.

Content

The textual content of a Item. Most Items can have text or html which can be used to support the Item.

Some Items will need more properties to support the required functionality of the Item - they will be enumerated below.