Introduction
This document is aimed at people new to the software and explains a little bit about it and some basic usage.

First of all you should always read the installation instructions relating to the release you download - this will always cover basic installation procedure and is enough to get you up and running.

Overview of Software
The software was originally designed as a very simple tool for blogging with Lotus Notes/Domino (back in December 2002), but as more and more features have been added it is now a full blown content management and publishing tool.

Its design aim was to create a tool which could be configured to the nth degree by an end user without the need to change any of the underlying notes design. Therefore people could create web sites using their own wysiwyg tools and if an underlying change was made in the design it wouldn't affect their changes.

Another design aim was to output standards compliant html - so everything the "DX Engine" pumps out is fully compliant - there is also an XHTML option in the configuration document so the output from the engine follows that specification.

The way the software provides this functionality is by using "Templates" and "DXTags". Templates are html documents which contain DXTags and are available for everything that can be configured - from the look and feel of your main screen, your web documents, lists of documents, adding comments etc etc.

If a block of html is used frequently in your site - like a page header then "Template Blocks" can be created so they only have to be edited in one place - there is a seperate document on these.

DXTags are predefined 'markers' where the system will merge set information (for example The Domino Blog Toolkit | ProjectDX.org will insert the title of your website into your html document - and this title comes from the title field within the configuration document). Another example is < $DXRecentSubjects$> - this will insert a list of all the recent documents created within your database.

There are a full list of available "DXTags" within then help documentation. The template that you have downloaded comes fully configured and with all the templates and DXtags that you need to get going.

Templates can be located under the Templates section within the navigation bar. You can select which template you want to use for each person within the configuration document under the Templates Tab.





All system settings are held within a single "Configuration Document" - this can be located within the navigation bar - under Configuration and then Site Configuration. There will be a full document on all settings found in here.



Creating a User Profile
This is covered in the installation guide but I will mention it again here. Within content documents fields like author and location can be autopopulated if a user profile exists for you - this will save time when creating new documents.

If you want to use the "Location" field (ie where you created the content - ie Home/England, Work or Leicester/England etc) within documents then you need to create some location records via the Locations view in the configuration section (see above image). Click "Add Location" to create a new one - the document is a single field so should be easy to create.

To create a User Profile you will need to goto the configuration section and select the "User Profiles" view (see above image) - Click "Add User Profile".

Your name and Notes Name should auto-populate (if you are adding a profile for someone else then you can edit these - the software allows for team/group blogging/publishing etc). The email/website address etc fields are not mandatory but are picked up and used if you respond to comments/discussion within your Notes Client.

Again the default location field is not mandatory but if you select a default location then this is picked up when you create content.

We shall ignore the advanced tab for now as I will cover this in another document - but it allows you to set different "skins" etc for different people when they access the site.

Creating Content
To add content to your database there is a "Create New Entry" button within all the Content views (the views at the top of the navigator - ie "Recent Content".

Clicking on this button will open up a new document screen which you can create Rich Text content using your notes client - add direct html if you wish - import images using your notes client etc. You can also categorise content, secure content, set content expiry/publish dates etc etc - further documentation will be available on all these subjects.

By default all content is created in "Draft" mode - when you want to publish your content you will need to set the status to "Published". There is a selection box to do this on the top right of the screen.



The creation time/date is set automatically but you can change it if you wish. Should you wish the document to be automatically published at a future date then set the creation date/time to that point and set the document status to "Held" and when you save the system will do the rest automatically.

The page name field is generally not needed unless you want to specify your own page name (this is the name the system uses as part of the url) as it is automatically generated. There are options in the configuration document to have this set automatically from your subjet field - there will be a seperate document on this.

The subject field needs filling in together with any content you wish to add within the rich text field.



The Author and Location fields will populate automatically if you have set up a user profile as mentioned above.

Other non essential settings in this document are:

• Categorisation tab where you can categorise your content (2 Levels) and secure your content etc.
• Text/html tab where you can just type in straight html and the inbuilt parser will not touch it.
• Short Description Tab - this content is autogenerated from your main content and is used by the RSS output for people with feed readers as a brief description of your content. This description can be edited by you and there is a lock option to stop the system overwriting it when you save.
• Miscellaneous Tab - here you can set things like alternate stylesheets/document templates and document expiry dates.
• Discussion Tab - a list of all the discussion for this content - whether it be from a browser or Notes Client.

Once you are happy with your content - save/close the document and the system will publish it and automatically update its latest lists etc.

This document is only intended as a brief introduction and there are other documents taking each section into more detail - however anything which is unclear or you want more information on post them here so other people can see the questions and responses.