Domain administration overview

Concepts in web-based administration

You also own two special projects that are included in the "My projects" section of your My start page: the "www" and "look" projects. These contain this site's domain-level content pages and data files. They are only accessible to users with domain-level administrative permissions, i.e. domain administrators such as you.

Site administration is restricted to users with the appropriate permissions. You, as the Domain adminstrator have access to the restricted administration pages. Each hosted tool has project specific adminstration components, available to the Project owner within each project permissions.

Administrative actions are taken on the following set of artifacts:

• Users are individuals who have either registered with this site or had a user account created by you. Each individual user has a unique username and password. Users hold one or more roles; each role has an assigned set of permissions. The Domain administrator defines access rights and interaction rules for individual users and groups of users on this site.
• User groups are administrator defined groups of users. Use user groups to grant roles and permissions to a set of users at one time.
• Projects are defined workspaces in which a group of project members can access project tools, communicate through discussions, access and track project artifacts and collaborate on project activities. Each project has its own subdomain, such as http://projectname.thisdomain. When projects are created on this site, the following are automatically established:
  • A home page and supporting project pages to access hosted tools and site features
  • A top-level source code module for version control of project files
  • A default set of discussions for members to communicate with one another and to receive notifications of project events
• Project groups enable easier site-wide administration of hosted projects. Project groups contain multiple projects, and are created and administered by you according to your organization's needs. Project groups can also contain groups of users. Categories, a unique type of project group, organize projects by type and can simplify the identification by users of projects of interest to them.
• Roles and permissions define actions available to users. A unique permission governs each user action. Permissions can be used collectively in roles. Roles are assigned to users, granting them the permissions associated with that role. Roles can be assigned to user groups as well.
• Resource patterns are all of the different elements used in this site including the tools, content, projects, and web pages. User roles and permissions on this site are defined by the specific resources to which they apply.

The environment and integrated tool set on this site is modeled on the suggest-and-approve workflow common to open source software development methodology. Although this site features pre-packaged resources, user roles, project settings, and tool configurations for your convenience, you can alter these settings to address particular community, project, or organizational needs.