OSXS 10.5 has 3 ways (that I know of) to create a user account via
server GUI tools:
1. Workgroup Manager
2. Server Preferences
3. System Preferences
You missed one: /Applications/Utilities/Directory.
The odd thing is that (on my system, at least) the user accounts
created by one of these apps are _not_ seen by the other apps! So I
have to create the same account 3 times if I want it to appear in
each of these apps
Not quite right. And you're probably missing a detail that's there on
the screen in front of you.
There are different places to create accounts
You can create accounts based on a particular client computer;
you can create accounts for use when people are logging in on the
server; and
you can create an account that's hosted by the server but used for
logging into client computers.
I suspect that these are the three different things you're seeing.
They're nothing to do with one-another. Pay particular attention to
the line in the Workgroup Manager window just underneath the icons at
the top, where it should say something like
Authenticated as myshortname to directory: /LDAPv2/127.0.0.1
Simon
--
Simon Slavin Fylde Building Room C11
Computing Development Officer 01524 65201 x 93569
Psychology Department
University of Lancaster