## Why is it called the Factory?
The Factory is part of every Federated Wiki page, and it's what you use to make the things that you use to compose the page.
Related: Understanding the Journal
##Working with the Factory
Whether you are on a fresh page or you are working on an existing page, you will see a pale grey pane at the bottom of the page. This is the Journal. It shows you the history of everything that's happened to the page so far.
At the bottom right corner you'll see a [+] button.
Click on the small [+] button to open up a second pale grey pane that gives you access to the actions available to you to work on the page. This is the Factory.
The three main actions available to you are centred at the top in grey text. Below that are a list of links to the Plugins, or tools, that you can use as you work on the page.
The Factory behaves like ordinary paragraphs in the sense that you can drag it up or down to move it within the page.
## What can you do with the Factory?
Double-click anywhere in the Factory pane to open up a new Text Editor box. Write something in this box. When you're done, click outside the box to finish, or hit return to end the paragraph and start a new one.
Drag a Text File or Image File across to the Factory and drop it in. Images appear with a caption that reads "uploaded image". Double click on the caption to edit it.
Use one of the Plugins listed. If you click on PageFold, the box that opens looks like Text Editor. It lets you write a word or two that will appear in the middle of a pale grey line break on your page. This is useful for separating quotes or discussion sections.
Related: Embedding Video
That's it.
discussion
Following some discussion with Jon Udell, Kate Bowles is having a think about how to explain SFW to users who may be unfamiliar with the terms commonly used in instructional talk. This is about the cultural origins of language and metaphor as much as it is about function.
Technical language explanations work best for those who are already equipped with the taken-for-granted terms they use. But where these terms are also familiar everyday words (factory, journal, twin, fork), they may be part of what confuses users from other disciplines, language groups or backgrounds.
At the same time this is an opportunity for knowledge-sharing: for users from other disciplines to learn a new vocabulary. So the aim is to include a really brief explanation of the history of the term as used in this context.
All contributions to this are really welcome. It's a partial translation of About Factory Plugin.
Maha Bali thanks for doing this - it is much needed; it would have helped a lot when we first started this, so I have added this and the Understanding the Journal to my First tips for newbies which can also do with some polishing up!