Concepts & Definitions

Liquid Site uses a specific terminology that is important to understand in order to administrate a web site. These same terms are also used extensively in this reference manual and in other documents. The list below attempts to define and describe the most important of these terms.

• Access Control List
  An access control list contains the Permissions for a resource in a Domain. The list enumerates a set of Users and Groups and the assigned permission level. A user is always given the highest permission level possible if several entries in the this should match. The access control list is inherited from the parent resource if none is defined.
• Content View
  The content view displays resources in a Domain that are used for storing non-presentation data or content. Typical objects in the content view are Sections and Documents. Resources related to the web presentation of these objects are present in the Site View.
• CSS
  The Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) format is the most common layout and styling langugage used on the world wide web. The CSS format is text-based and readable by both humans and machines. A CSS file contains detailed layout and formatting instructions for HTML documents, allowing a single style sheet to be used for several documents. A working knowledge of CSS is required in order to modify the layout and style of web pages.
• Document
  A document consists of a set of Document Property values. The values can have different formats and provides structured document data that can be retrieved and displayed on a web Page. Each document must have a parent Section that defines the set of document properties available.
• Document Property
  A document property is a semantical definition for a field in a Document. The set of document properties in a Section defines the fields that the documents in that section will have. Each document property defines a name and a data type for the property, whereas the value is contained in the documents (similar in spirit to an XML DTD).
• Domain
  A domain consists of a set of related web resources, normally belonging to a single organization or entity. All resources are shared within a domain, which means that Users and Groups span all the Sites in the domain. Note that a domain does not have to correlate to an Intenet domain name, although often that is the case. A domain may be registered to contain Hosts from several Intenet domain names.
• File
  A file consists of binary or text data for a resource on the world wide web. Files are primarily used for storing images or other binary objects, but may also be used for HTML code. It is recommended to use Pages for HTML content, however. Files may also be attached to a Document.
• Folder
  A folder is used to group web resources in a Site. If a request is made directly for the folder, the web resource index.html is returned.
• Group
  A group is a set of Users in a Domain. Normally all the users in the group share some common important property, such as being content editors or similar. Groups can be used in Access Control Lists instead of specifying all users in the group. Each user can be a member one or more groups.
• Host
  A host name identifies a computer on the Internet. The host name is part of the URL for a web resource, and each Site is normally associated with one of the host names in the Domain.
• HTML
  The HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is the most common document format used on the world wide web. The HTML format is text-based and readable by both humans and machines. An HTML document normally only contains the text and overall structure of a web page, using external CSS style sheets and image files for specifying the layout. A working knowledge of HTML is required in order to modify the layout and style of web pages.
• Lock
  A lock prevents accidental overwrites to objects as a result of parallell editing by two or more users. Whenever an object is edited in any way, a lock is acquired to prevent other users from editing the object. Upon saving the changes to the object the lock is removed. If a form or a dialog is not closed using the proper "Save", "Previous" or "Cancel" buttons, a stale lock may remain and require manual removal.
• Page
  A page contains the HTML code for a page on the world wide web. The HTML code for each page is divided into one or more Page Elements, allowing elements to be inherited or modified from a Template page.
• Page Element
  A page element is a piece of HTML code that can be part of a Page or a Template. The page element can include other page elements or contain advanced processing instructions, as defined by the FreeMarker language. A page element is identified by it's name and may be inherited if defined in a template.
• Permission
  The permission level controls what operations a user or a group are entitled to perform on an object. There are four permission levels; read, write, publish, and admin. The read permission is required in order to read or list an object. The write permission is needed to modify an object. The publish permission is required to modify the online or offline status of an object. And finally the admin permission is needed for changing the Access Control List with permissions.
• Section
  A section provides a way to group and structure Documents. It is the equivalent to a Folder in the Content View, but also contains the definition of the Document Properties available for contained documents.
• Site
  A web site consists of a collection of documents and files available from a single location on the world wide web. A web site is normally identified by a Host name, for example www.liquidsite.org. It is also possible to separate sites on protocol, port number or base directory. Web sites can only share information with other sites in the same Domain, but they can of course link to public resources on other sites.
• Site View
  The site view displays resources in a Domain that are used for presenting content on the web. Typical objects in the site view are Sites, Folders and Pages. Data content unrelated to the web presentation are present in the Content View.
• Superuser
  A superuser is a special User that does not belong to any Domain. Instead the superuser has full privileges across all domains. Some operations on domains can only be performed by a superuser. Having more than a few superusers should be avoided.
• Template
  A template is a Page that is used to share Page Elements between pages. Templates consists of Page Elements just as normal pages, but cannot be directly accessed on the web. Pages or other templates may inherit the page elements in a template, reusing or modifying individual page elements as needed.
• Translator
  A translator maps Content View objects to a web Site. The translator points to a Section whose Documents and subsections becomes available as virtual Folders under translator. In order to retrieve the contents of a document or a section with a translator, a index.html Page must be created.
• Uniform Resource Locator (URL)
  A uniform resource locator (URL) is used for locating pages and other resources on the world wide web. The URL can be either absolute or relative to the current resource URL. Absolute URLs normally start with http: or https:.
• User
  A user is an authenticated web site visitor. Each user is identified by a user name that is unique within the Domain. Users must log in with a password to authenticate themselves, otherwise the default anonymous user is assumed. Each user can be a member one or more Groups.
• Web Page
  See Page.
• Web Site
  See Site.