Content Delivery and Deployment [ 252 ] Deploying from Alfresco WCM to DM repository Starting from Alfresco 3.3 version onwards, the WCM deployment facilities have been enhanced to add an additional deployment target. This additional deployment receiver allows the WCM content, authored and stored in Staging Sandbox, to be deployed to local and remote Alfresco repositories (Alfresco DM) as shown in the following gure. The DM Deployment Target receives a deployment from an Alfresco WCM authoring environment and puts the content into the workspace spaces store where it can be used to support a dynamic website. This feature provides greater exibility in moving an approved staging content from WCM to DM (Document Management). The Alfresco Deployment Receiver is congured as a sub-system, and a new Data Dictionary folder Web Deployed is congured by default as the deployment target. Setting up Alfresco DM as the deployment target In order to set up Alfresco DM as the deployment target, you will have to edit the global properties le and then restart Alfresco. Go to the /tomcat/shared/classes/ folder, open the alfresco-global.properties le, and add the following two lines: deployment.dmr.consolidate=true deployment.dmr.name=alfresco Now restart Alfresco to activate the deployment target. Download from Wow! eBook <www.wowebook.com> Chapter 7 [ 253 ] The DM Deployment Target is a target that is registered with the repository-based WCM Deployment Engine. By default, its target name is "alfresco". Although of course, this can be changed through the conguration deployment.dmr.name. The authoring environment for a WCM web project consists of a set of related AVM stores. The different stores have a naming convention for their store names. The consolidate ag ( deployment.dmr.name=true) says to deploy all of these related stores to the same location. If it is turned off by setting deployment.dmr. consolidate to false, there will be a separate path for each store and content will be duplicated in the DM store. Deploying to DM Go to the Alfresco WCM web project and congure the DM deployment receiver. The following are the steps to congure the DM deployment receiver from Alfresco WCM Project. 1. Navigate to Company Home | Web Projects | <web project name>. 2. Select Edit Web Project Settings from the Action menu. 3. Click on Next to reach the Congure Deployment Servers window. 4. Click on the Add Deployment Receiver link and ll up the following values in the form: Type = Live Server Display Name = [Some Name] Transport Name = default Host = [localhost for local server or enter host name or IP address for external server] Port = 50500 Username = Target Alfresco DM username Password = Target Alfresco DM password Target Name = alfresco 5. Click on the Add button and then the Finish button. 6. Now go to that WCM project's Staging Sandbox and deploy a snapshot to the new DM target. Download from Wow! eBook <www.wowebook.com> Content Delivery and Deployment [ 254 ] If you log in to Target Alfresco DM and go to the Company Home space, you will notice a new project folder in the Company Home | Web Deployed space as shown in the following screenshot: Summary In this chapter we learned: • Alfresco provides both static as well as dynamic delivery models. • You can congure the Alfresco stage environment to deploy the selective content to external live servers and test servers. • You can also set up the web project for auto deployment wherein the content is automatically deployed to live servers upon workow approval. Download from Wow! eBook <www.wowebook.com> Managing Multiple Websites Using WCM This chapter covers information about managing multiple web projects using one installation of Alfresco WCM. This means you can leverage a single instance of Alfresco WCM to stage and manage many websites. This chapter focuses on reusing assets such as images, forms, and workows across multiple web projects. This chapter also introduces you to a concept called "layered folder", where you could logically use a folder in many websites without copying the content in multiple places. By the end of this chapter, you will have learned how to: • Congure and use multiple web projects • Reuse forms, templates, and workows across many websites • Use a single set of media assets across multilingual websites • Set up and use layered folders Download from Wow! eBook <www.wowebook.com> Managing Multiple Websites Using WCM [ 256 ] Multiple web projects Within a single instance of Alfresco you can create as many web projects as you can. You can have common assets shared across many of these web projects. Once created, you can use the same web forms, templates, workows, and deployment targets across multiple projects. You can also have the same set of users managing these multiple sites. For example, a user could be a Content Manager on Web Project1 and Content Reviewer on Web Project2. Reusing forms, templates, and workows When creating a new project or editing the web project settings, you will notice the list of all of the available web forms. Basically, the forms that are dened in Company Home | Data Dictionary | Web Forms are available to all of the web projects along with templates and workows associated with those forms. Download from Wow! eBook <www.wowebook.com> Chapter 8 [ 257 ] You can add the selected web forms to a project by clicking on the Add to List button, as shown in the following screenshot: Once a web form is added to a web project, you can overwrite the form details such as the output lename pattern, you can congure the workow locally as per the web project approval process, and you can also congure the output template settings as shown in the following screenshot. These are very exible ways of dening the forms and workows globally, and overwriting them locally: Download from Wow! eBook <www.wowebook.com> Managing Multiple Websites Using WCM [ 258 ] Using a web project as a template In some scenarios you might want to create web projects that are similar in nature. For example, marketing websites for each product might have similar features, and they might be managed by the same set of people following similar workow approval processes. The customer extranet websites for each of your customers might fall into this category. In such scenarios using a typical website as a template to recreate many such websites will not only save you time, but also sets a well-dened process in the organization. You can select such a web project as a template, as shown in the following screenshot: Now while creating a similar website, you can create a new web project based on an existing template web project. The Staging Sandbox structure, web forms, workow, and users will be copied from the selected web project. This must be done while creating a new web project, as shown in the following screenshot: Download from Wow! eBook <www.wowebook.com> Chapter 8 [ 259 ] Once a new web project is created, you can always overwrite the existing conguration. You can also create new forms, workows, and structures as needed. Managing multiple websites using a single web project You can also use a single web project to have multiple websites. You can group all of the assets related to a website into a folder in a web project. Hence, a web project could have many such folders and each one could be interpreted and managed as a website. This approach is better when compared to having a separate web project for each website if you have the following requirements: • All of the content in these websites have similar workow approval processes • The content is managed by the same set of people • All of the websites have a similar look and feel • The deployment (going live) to the product server or servers for all of these websites happens at the same time Basically, this is good for small to medium websites where majority of the content is static. Setting up multiple URLs on the target server One scenario could be deploying all of the folders to a specic target server. On that target server you could use web server proxy to have a specic URL pointing to a specic folder, as shown in the following diagram: Download from Wow! eBook <www.wowebook.com> Managing Multiple Websites Using WCM [ 260 ] Setting up FSR for each target website Another scenario could be deploying selected folders to a specic live server as shown in the following diagram. This can be done by using the Source Path and Excludes elds of deployment, while conguring the FSR on a stage server. Refer to Chapter 7, Content Delivery and Deployment for more details on deployment: Creating many webapp folders Another way of creating multiple websites within a web project is to use multiple webapp folders. The webapp folder is the web application folder used in application servers such as Tomcat or JBoss. A web application exists as a structured hierarchy of directories. The root of this hierarchy serves as a root for serving les that are part of this context. For example, for a web application located at site2 in a web server, the index.html le located at the base of the web application hierarchy can be served to satisfy a request to http://some_url/site2/index.html. In Alfresco WCM, each web project has only one web application ( webapp) folder and it is named as ROOT. To create another webapp folder for a specic web project, navigate to the Actions drop-down menu and click on Create Webapp Folder: Download from Wow! eBook <www.wowebook.com> Chapter 8 [ 261 ] You can also change the default web application. Click on Edit Web Project Settings from the Actions drop-down menu and change the setting in the Default Webapp eld as shown in the following screenshot: Layered folders Large enterprises usually run global operations. In order to have effective services, sales and marketing, they usually have many regional websites. Most often the information in these websites is 80 percent common (global) and 20 percent different (local). However, enterprises end up replicating or duplicating the 80 percent of such common information in each and every regional website. Let's consider a scenario where an enterprise is having two websites, one for USA- based customers and the other one for UK-based customers with the pages and les as shown in the following image: Download from Wow! eBook <www.wowebook.com> . multiple websites using a single web project You can also use a single web project to have multiple websites. You can group all of the assets related to a website into a folder in a web project deployment: Creating many webapp folders Another way of creating multiple websites within a web project is to use multiple webapp folders. The webapp folder is the web application folder used. only one web application ( webapp) folder and it is named as ROOT. To create another webapp folder for a specic web project, navigate to the Actions drop-down menu and click on Create Webapp