Once you've created your content, you can click the Publish It button. The Publish It button will cause the content to get published into the folder you're in, as opposed to specifying where you want the content to go. You could also select the more interesting Publish As option, which results in the screen shown in Figure C.

FIGURE C


There are several publishing options you can use. Roll over picture for a larger image.

Publish As has options including saving as draft, restricting use, and mailing members. There's also an option to publish to the Sidebar. The Sidebar is the bar to the left side of the content which contains folders for documents, the Index, and the Library. This is my personal favorite because it comes in handy if you want a visible page at the top level, such as a project synopsis or a newsletter like the QuickPlace News Site.

However, you can also restructure the folder system if you need something different. Not only can you customize, rename, or delete the existing Discussion and Library folders, you can also create new ones yourself. QuickPlace provides several standard folder templates you can use:

• Standard List is a simple list of pages. You just need to click to jump to that page.
• Response List is a threaded discussion group.
• Headline has five or fewer pages under a banner containing links to them. You can click banner hotspots to jump to that page.
• Slide Show gives thirty or fewer pages shown one at a time in sequence with Forward and Back buttons.
• Ordered List has sixty or fewer pages that can be reordered.

Customizing, decorating and adding new rooms
The Customize sidebar button lets you alter the system in a variety of ways and is also where you create Forms. Basic items cover hiding the Tutorial or Calendar, changing the title of your place, reordering the sidebar items, and choosing whether you can receive mail. Next is the Decorate option, which lets you remodel the look by picking one of the predefined styles, or creating a new one and then tweaking individual aspects such as fonts to your liking or adding your corporate logo to pages.

Customize also controls Rooms and Groups. Rooms are a place within a place; a private area with a restricted membership. Rooms give you the ability to support private activities for members or split a project into more manageable chunks. Rooms can have their own decoration, managers, groups and content; you can even have a Room within a Room. Figure D shows our Demo place, suitably modified and decorated in "Pond Scene"style.

FIGURE D


Our Demo QuickPlace newly decorated and tweaked. Roll over picture for a larger image.

Groups create a named subset of users and can be used to set security for a Room and for mailing members. Groups and Rooms tend to go hand-in-hand. On a Domino server, the groups get created in the Directory and the default members group can form a handy point of contact for the Notes Administrator. The last item in the Customize area is the option to download an Offline QuickPlace. Offline gives you two things, the ability to have a local synchronized copy of your place and faster access over the Internet. It's worth having if you are on the road or are the manager, but the downside is the (onetime) 15MB download plus the files and content of your place. Lotus does provide the Offline QuickPlace on CD though.