Getting started

To launch engenu, from your web browser, navigate to http://www.myserver.com/engenu/ (substituting the name of your own file server, of course). When you see this:

enter your engenu password and get to work.

Once you input your password, a directory window will open. The top of it will look something like this:

What you are seeing is all the folders at the top-most HTTP level of your file server. Just folders, no standalone files -- and only the top level of folders, no subfolders.

These are all the folders that engenu might be able to edit.

Is engenu intended to edit all of these folders? Absolutely not -- and the software is going to some pains to warn you away from folders that engenu might damage.

Do you understand? engenu operates on folders that contain either nothing or images, PDF files, sub-folders or PHP files and their back-up versions. If a folder on your file server contains some other type of file, that folder is almost certainly not meant to be edited by engenu.

How can you tell the difference? Those stoplight images at the left are your telltales.

I What do the stoplights mean?

If a folder is marked with a green light, it is not only an engenu folder, it is a folder that has already been completely processed at least once by engenu. If you click on the green light image, that particular web page or web site will open up in a preview window or tab so that you can see how it looks.

If a folder is marked with a red light, the folder contains nothing that is inconsistent with an engenu folder, although it has not yet been completely processed by engenu, That means the folder contains either nothing or nothing but images, PDF files, sub-folders or PHP files and their back-up versions -- no other kinds of files.

If that folder is truly intended to be processed by engenu -- and there is no substitute for human intelligence -- once this has been done completely -- for that folder and any sub-folders -- the folder will show a green light, as above.

If a folder is marked with an amber light -- proceed with caution. This is almost certainly not an engenu folder. If you open a folder displaying an amber light with engenu, you may do irreparable damage to the files within that folder. Unless you know for sure that a folder displaying an amber light truly is meant to be processed by engenu, steer clear. You want to make sure that engenu opens only those folders it is intended to open.

Let's edit a folder.

When you first install engenu, all of your folder may be marked with amber lights. You may have to upload some folders full of photos to the top-most HTTP level of your file server in order to have something to play with. When you've done that refresh the index to see your new folders.

What's an index? It's simply a list of folders available to be edited. How do you refresh the index? Just hit the refresh button on your web browser.

Each line of the index is a link to the contents of a particular folder. If you click on one of those links, it will open into a new kind of index. If the folder you just opened is empty, or if it contains no sub-folders, you may see only the name of the folder you just clicked on. But if you have opened a true folder hierarchy, you might see something like this:

This is an index of every editable folder in this particular hierarchy. In other words, this is an engenu site at some state of completion. The stoplights work just the same, so, in this case, every page is incomplete. If all the lights are red, it almost always means the site hasn't even been started yet.

If you count the slashes, you'll see that this particular site goes four levels deep. In fact, the real web site is much larger than what you are seeing here. This site is a record of homes that were previewed for a real estate buyer -- a perfect use for engenu.

Again each line in this index is a link. If you click on one of the links, you will be editing that page. When you have completely processed every page in an engenu site, all the stoplights will display as green lights.

engenu is multi-user software...

We'll talk about the engenu editors in the next few sections, but there is something of importance to be considered while we are looking at this index:

As long as you don't try to work on the same pages at the same times, more than one user can process an engenu site. In the example above, one person might agree to take on the "West Georgia" and "West Palmaire" pages, while the other person handles the six other pages.

For a larger job, you could split sub-hierarchies among individual editors or even teams of editors. There is no limit to how large an engenu site can be, so it can be very time-efficient to spread the editing burden among a few -- or even a few dozen -- people.

These people can be anywhere. engenu is server-based for a reason. If you need help from an associate in Guam, and if that person knows your engenu password, you're good to go.

You can access your engenu pages from any web browser on any computer anywhere in the world, so you can even play "beat the clock" on big jobs: Have the California team pick up the slack when the New York crew starts to fall asleep.

Likewise, if you happen to spot an error in one of your engenu pages, you -- or anyone who knows your engenu password -- can correct it from anywhere.