More specifics for pages

[GoAncestry]

I was a major user of Ip.Content in the past.  I did perform the upgrade to V.4 this weekend and though there are some things to get used to, I am beginning to see the possibilities for the future.  Here are a few things I did in the past with Ip.content and the use of hooks and blocks that I would love to get back into a functioning state.  I thought somewhere there was a post about what should be in the documentation, well, I think these functions explained would be a great way to get people that are less familiar with "code use" back into a productive role with this new software.

Past: I had created some additional fields in articles, and then when I created a block they were used as selectors that I could then only select certain articles for display based upon this new field value.  I had fields for State, County, and Project.  I think they are still within the DB, but since none of the block made the transition I need to create new blocks and I am not sure how to do this.

   Question: What is an easy/clear way to add unique fields to an article when creating it?

   Question: What is an easy/clear way to use these fields as discriminate selectors?

Basically my next area is similar.  I had sub categories of images, I would like to select images for presentation, but only from a specific sub-category, plus I want the images displayed a single image at a time within the block for a few seconds and then rotate to the next one, and would prefer a set of random images (say 15-30) for rotation while the user is on the page.

  Question: What is an easy/clear way to create a block that pulls images from a specific sub-category?

  Question: What is.... to create a random image presentation, one image at a time that rotates through a set number of images from this sub-category?

[GoAncestry]

Really, nothing in the way of response?  Is there a better place to ask for documentation?