John, site-wide static content sections work fine. Administration is via http://<yoursite>/admin/content-sections/; you add the URL of your folder or subdirectory using the form, and it becomes available.
Now... I'm still having great difficulty making content sections, either static or custom, work at the group level. The documentation is sparse (as mentioned above), and not at all intuitive. Even such things as the "Sort Key" cause difficulty until you figure out that it's a required field. Every day is an adventure in tracking down why certain items break, and it's never clear whether it's an operator error or a system problem.
I for one would be _most_ grateful to read a "SysAdmin Guide," something more than a tutorial but less than the documentation for each individual module. Something that would give me more feeling for how the modules work together.
After trial and error, I can now understand the relationship between groups and bboard administration, but it took much longer than it should. These things are not at all obvious unless one has been using ACS or OpenACS for quite a while.
I guess what I'm looking for is a guide that would take me through the process of creating a user group, adding modules to the group, and setting the flags and options on the modules, preferably by example. That's the biggest hole I've seen in making ACS accessible.
Meanwhile, I'll just keep on plugging away, digging into the code where necessary, and learning piecewise. I'd love to stand on the shoulders of giants, though...