Provided your site is set up and configured the major learning/familiarisation issue -mastering the TYPO 3 editing interface - is actually quite small.

TYPO3 is a large and flexible content management framework - a powerful infrastructure, most of which operates in the background of a web site. Before it is useful it needs to be configured, wich means bringing together some or all of:

• creating the designs for the main web-site and for the output of extensions
• implementing the design or designs as templates and connecting them to the site
• adding functions in the form of extensions
• the development of additional extensions for functions essential to the organisation, but not currently programmed
• support for management of site roles, for both front-end and back-end users
• adding content to the site

What can you do yourself?

In principle, everything.

The more likely reality is that community organisations may be able to call on web-design skills, or at least buy in a design cheaply, or even get one free from the internet (see the next page).

You probably don't have the skills to set up and configure TYPO3, though there are ways round that - and/or we can do it for you.

Unless you are in a position to outsource everything (and we don't recommend you to do this, since being in control of the origination and publishing of content yourself is what a content management system is all about), you also need to consider

• who, if anyone, in your organisation has the necessary skills to manage the roles that will be in-house
• how to get people who don't have the necessary skills trained

So the main issue you face is getting people to be able to  add the content to the site.

What's the base skill set needed?

The base skills required to contribute content to a TYPO3 web site are:

• using a web-browser
• mastering an unfamiliar back-end environment (which should have been configured to make it as simple as possible)
• Entering text into a word processor, or cutting and pasting/importing it from pre-existing text
• Filling in forms

Of these, it is likely that only the second is actually an issue - so, essentially, the learning curve is small.