Lists, Libraries, Form Libraries

Lists are how Sharepoint thinks about its contents. Everything inside of Sharepoint is in a list. Some lists have different properties assigned to them, such as "being a subsite" or "being a calendar" or "being a document library," but all of them are, for real, lists. You can act on lists with webparts to display different information, or use "Manage Content" to see them stripped bare of their browser-based display features and actually edit each item's metadata.

• Lists are 2-axis matrices of information, one axis being the item, and the other axis being the metadata about that item
• Calendars are Lists With Dates and sometimes files.
• Libraries are lists that have documents and files associated with them. 
• Form Libraries have weird automation, and their form for submissions can be customized in Infopath.
• That means you need Infopath. Eventually, someone will ask you for a form.

When you are doing Sharepoint development, you are typically styling an information pull from a list into the browser view. There are a number of ways to do this - usually the Content Query Webpart is the main one - but that is what you are doing.

Sharepoint was sold initially as a document server to help cut down on papers named "Final Final Final 6," but Microsoft keeps tacking on functions, all of which derive from Sharepoint's basically list-oriented self. Everything on the site is a list. If you want a dropdown menu, that is another list.

List Management
Everything in Sharepoint is a list. Everything. You don't need to Manage A List, you need to sort out what you want your list to do. There is probably an out-of-the-box one you have access to that will do what you need, IE: post announcements.

Library Management
Sharepoint likes to populate new Team Sites with a library called Documents, which is as much use as a fart in a high wind. When you create new sites for your users, name your document libraries something coherent and suggestive. I like "Minutes and Agendas," and "Fruit Menu" and "Budget Spreadsheets" and "Common Hibernation Zone Development Documents" Each library should store all documents of a type that shares coherent metadata, IE: Minutes, and the metadata should be used to group that content appropriately, so that it can be found later.

• A Note on Folders: If at all possible, do not use folders to organize your content. Their sole purpose is to permit a group of a given kind of document to be kept separate and private from the main body of the document library. This is so your manager can hide their minutes effectively from everyone else.
• Folders Are For Permission Management.
• It is Not Trivial to move documents out of a folder structure once they are in there.
• Use coherently named document libraries instead, add more when you need them.

Form Library Management

Form Libraries can have their information really easily exported to Excel and similar for maintenance and data-mining purposes. I use them for things like ticket orders. You will need Infopath to customize them, and they are their own entire post, relating to permissions and form customization.

So, that's lists. Everything is a list. Whee.