# How It Works

Imagine running a clothing shop on WEEGLOO. You add products, upload photos, work alongside colleagues, and in the end your customers see those products on your shop's website. Once you know where all of this happens, and the path your work takes before it reaches a customer, the rest of the features fall into place.

This page does not cover individual features. Instead it walks through two big-picture views of WEEGLOO as a whole. One is **how the space you work in is divided into layers** (your account, the *Organization*, and the *Space*), and the other is **how what you create reaches your customers** (the content studio and external publishing).

## The three layers: account, Organization, Space {#the-three-layers-account-organization-space}

The space you work in on WEEGLOO is made up of three layers. Using the clothing shop as an analogy, it looks like this.

```
Account (you)  →  Organization (the company)  →  Space (a department office)  →  content (products, photos)
```

- **Your account** is you as an individual. It is one person who logs in with an email and password.
- The *Organization* is the top-level unit that corresponds to the company as a whole. It groups and oversees several workspaces.
- The *Space* is a department office inside that company. It is the workspace where the actual products, photos, and settings live.
- Content is the things you create inside that office, such as products and photos.

First, you log in with your **personal account**. This account is a single person, not a company. Just as one person can belong to several companies, you can use a single account to join and work in several *Organization*s.

An *Organization* is the company-level unit where those accounts come together to work. The company that runs the clothing shop is one *Organization*. Billing plans are also set at this *Organization* level.

A *Space* is the actual workspace inside an *Organization*. Just as the clothing-shop company can keep a separate *Space* for its online store and another *Space* for internal announcements, one *Organization* oversees several *Space*s. Conversely, every *Space* must belong to exactly one *Organization*.

And content such as products, photos, and articles is always created and lives inside one particular *Space*. A tumbler product created in the online-store *Space* exists only within that *Space* and does not appear in the internal-announcements *Space*. A *Space* acts as a partition that keeps content from mixing together.

> To sum up: a person logs in with an **account**, becomes a member of some *Organization*, and is then assigned to a *Space* inside that *Organization* to work. Content is held inside that *Space*.

## Organization and Space: two levels of membership {#organization-and-space-two-levels-of-membership}

In this three-layer structure, how far a person has been brought in is split into two levels. This distinction is the starting point for "who can do what" in WEEGLOO.

First, a person becomes a member of an *Organization*. This is like being registered as an employee at a company. Since you cannot join an *Organization* on your own, someone already inside has to invite a new member by email before they can join.

Next, that member is separately assigned to the *Space* they will work in. This is like an employee being posted to a specific department office. Being an *Organization* member does not automatically put you into every *Space*. To let someone work with the products in the online-store *Space*, you have to assign them to that *Space* specifically.

Each of these two positions carries a permission level. The *Organization* position has three roles, *Owner*, *Admin*, and *Member*, and the *Space* position carries its own role that defines what you can do within that workspace. The specific steps for inviting people and setting roles are covered in [Organization and Space](/getting-started/core-concepts/access-and-permissions/organization-and-space.md). Here you only need the big-picture flow: you log in with an account, become an *Organization* member, and are then assigned to a *Space*.

## The content studio and external publishing: two places {#the-console-and-external-publishing-two-places}

Now for the second big-picture view. Between creating content inside a *Space* and that content reaching a customer, there are two places.

- **The content studio**: the management screen where you and your colleagues in the same *Space* work. Creating products, editing them, and uploading photos all happen here. The content studio shows both content you are still working on and content you have published.
- **External publishing (delivery)**: the place that shows content to visitors, like the actual online-store website. Only published content is delivered here.

If you only create a tumbler product in the content studio, it appears in the content studio but does not yet go up to the external publishing place. You have to publish it once more before it is finally delivered to customers. So working in the content studio does not immediately show up on the site.

To use an analogy, the content studio is the back-room workshop of a shop, and the external publishing place is the display window that customers see. Even after you finish preparing a product in the workshop, you have to take one more action to put it in the display window before customers can see it.

Drawn as a flow, it looks like this.

```
Create in the content studio  →  publish  →  external publishing (delivery)  →  visitor
```

The same applies when you edit a product you have already published. Even if you fix the price in the content studio and save, the most recently published price keeps being delivered to customers until you publish again. The states content can have, and what publishing changes, are covered in detail in [States and Publishing](/getting-started/core-concepts/common/states-and-versions.md).

> These two places are separate for each *Space*. A product published in the online-store *Space* is delivered to the online-store site and does not mix with the external publishing place of the internal-announcements *Space*.

## The whole thing as one flow {#the-whole-thing-as-one-flow}

If you stitch the two views so far together into a single clothing shop, you get the full flow of using WEEGLOO.

1. Log in with your personal **account**.
2. Become an *Organization* member of the clothing-shop company. (Through an invitation.)
3. Get assigned to the online-store *Space* inside it and enter the workspace.
4. In the content studio, create the "Stainless Tumbler 500ml" product and upload a main photo.
5. Publish the product so it is delivered to the external publishing place, where customers see it on the online-store site.

## What to do next {#what-to-do-next}

- [Organization and Space](/getting-started/core-concepts/access-and-permissions/organization-and-space.md): covers how to invite colleagues to an *Organization* and assign them to a *Space*, and the differences between the *Owner*, *Admin*, and *Member* roles.
- [Content Modeling](/getting-started/core-concepts/content/content-modeling.md): covers what items content such as products is made up of inside a *Space*, and how to define that structure.
- [States and Publishing](/getting-started/core-concepts/common/states-and-versions.md): covers the flow of publishing content created in the content studio so it is visible externally, and the states content can have.