AW: Difficult to start working with Midgard/Midcom

Hi,

> Now I am confused re the discusion about the "old" Aegir.
> How do people use Midgard/Midcom to build and maintain a 
> website? What is the process?  What tools do you use? I dont 
> understand how I create say a content page that allows a user to 
> freely format it.  What is the style for that?

I am not using midcom myself right now, but basically it boils down to
this:
- log into Aegir:
- Create the new company using the midcom template for the root-page.
- Create a style for that company using the midcom-style-template.
- Assign that style to the rootpage of your new company.

- go to your new site and initialize midcom (requires a few klicks on
submit)
- use the midcom-administration-link
- you get to see your companies root-topic
- create an article under this topic and fill it with content
- create a subtopic and articles under it and fill them with content

- modify the layout:
- log into Aegir(your company)
- go to the styles section
- modify f.x the css style-element to change colors 
 
> Currently I have fiddled around using Aegir to modify the 
> root page but 
> that is a long way from having a site managed under a CMS.

That's one of the common problems for Newbies, i guess (i can remeber I
had similar problems when I started using midgard).
I would therefore suggest you use a template for a starting point and
then modify it according to your needs/wishes.

This is only a rough sketch and as i said i am not very experienced with
midcom (maybe it's a bit old-school but i still prefer the old way using
Aegir only)

If you want to do it the Aegir-Only way, i would suggest creating a
second company.
Then use the AegirSampleSite as template for the root-page and the Aegir
Sample Style as template for the root-style, assign the style to your
root-page, approve both the style and the root-page, create some topics
in the topic-section, fill them with articles, and approve the articles.
Then start exploring the page-elements and style-stuff to find out how
it all works.
(probably nothing one can learn in few hours..)
 
> I ahve 
> a deadline of end of May to get something working.

Seems like a close call to me, but don't worry, we will try to walk you
through it :)

Have fun,

Alex

PS: maybe if you find the time you could contribute a small documentary
about your experiences? Maybe merge with something already out there?