I'm setting up a simple home network server for filesharing and experimentation( i have little experience with networking)and my question is about user identity. Firstly, I'll be using samba since my wife uses windows. Will there be a seperate "shared folder" on the server for her than for me? Second, and more importantly, if I ssh into the server from my laptop, will I be working under the same user info as my laptop, or would I need to create a user account on the server and simply be logging remotly into that? Probably stupid questions, but again, I have very little experience with networking.

To your the first question: You are the one who set up shares, hence, you decide - will it be a common share for your wife and you or it will be two separate.
To your the second question: While using SSH client, you'll have to use valid account from your server OS (for example, root).

To build on what S4KmBL said, you can set up a user account for each user on your linux machine. Then you create a user with the same user name and password for samba. (It's best to have users accessing the shares via there own user names; many Linux users frown on using ssh as root.)

In your /etc/samba/smb.conf file, you manage access and permissions. You can allow all users to see all the shares, or you can restrict users to individual shares, or you can make one or more shares accessible for browsing by "guests."

In addition, you must make sure that shared directories are marked as "shared" with the appropriate permissions in the directory configuration.

In case it helps, here's a bit of my smb.conf file.

The most helpful guide I have found to Samba was Samba by Example.