File sharing across multiple computers - is there an easier way?

Have a small office that is getting bigger, so we purchased a new 20" iMac. Previously, we had an old iMac G4 and iBook G4. All three computers are part of the same LAN.
In the past, we have shared files across the computers by first mounting a shared computer, then creating an alias to that share and copying the alias to the dock. This allowed us to just click an icon to have access to files on the other computer.
As the office has gotten bigger and we have added a new computer, we need a more reliable solution. We need to be able to access common files (such as word documents and Excel spreadsheets) in a single location. For example, the iMac G4 has document templates that we are constantly changing, but we want to make changes only to a common copy.
Can anyone make some suggestions?

I know you can do this by exporting the common shared directory as an NFS share, and then configuring each client to transparently mount that share at a common point in the filesystem. For example, if you wanted to have a common set of fonts accessible to every client on your network, you could export /Library/Fonts on the server, and have every client mount it at ~/Library/Fonts. Applications running on the client access the fonts on the server, and don't know any differently.
Unfortunately, its not a trivial thing to set up on either the server or the client. I could try to come up with a tutorial, but I haven't had time to get into it myself to really comprehend all of the possibilities with using NFS like that.

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