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Environment types
In a typical Lotus Web Content Management installation, there are multiple
physical Lotus Web Content Management servers. Each server or cluster in
your Web content system requires a separate data repository, but they usually
share the same Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP). A Web content
system can be deployed in isolation or in parallel with a WebSphere Portal
production server. In our experience, these servers end up performing one
of the following roles within the Lotus Web Content Management infrastructure:
- Authoring
- Staging or preview server
- Production (live) or delivery
Authoring
Authoring is where you develop and unit test the Web Content Management
technical assets such as presentation templates, HTML components, menus,
and navigators. In addition, this server can be the first place you install
patches and fix packs to ensure that they do not negatively impact your
Lotus Web Content Management servers. Typically, you syndicate changes
to the staging environment to roll out changes. These changes are, in turn,
syndicated or replicated to the production or live environments after appropriate
testing.
| Restriction:
Lotus Web Content Management does not currently support the notion of selective
replication. That is, you cannot have Lotus Web Content Management only
syndicate design changes from the authoring server to other servers in
your environment. Therefore, you must be careful when syndicating content
to or from an authoring server. One approach is to set the syndicator to
syndicate only live content and delete all content (via the API) prior
to syndication. Another similar approach is to configure syndication the
same way but have no live content in the authoring server. Regardless of
your preferred approach, be careful when syndicating from the authoring
server to other servers. |
The content authors and approvers create, edit, preview, approve, and expire
content. This environment can be distributed if required. For example,
if you have offices across the globe, it might make sense to have authors
work on a server closer to their physical location as opposed to a centralized
authoring system.
If you choose to have a distributed authoring environment, it is important
to ensure that people on separate servers do not attempt to work on the
same content simultaneously. In situations where distributed authoring
environments make sense, secure your Lotus Web Content Management environment
such that people on each authoring server can only modify a unique set
of data.
Staging
Staging is sometime perceived as merely "nice to have", but a
staging environment is highly recommended as a safety net. A staging environment
provides a chance to review changes in the context of your whole site before
they are syndicated into the live environment. This can include previewing
the Web content and integrating it to or from other applications. A staging
environment is particularly useful if you are pushing out a large number
changes simultaneously.
A staging environment can also tie into your test environment, depending
on the relevant testing that is part of your content management and
WebSphere Portal Development life cycles. From a best practices perspective,
the staging environment should use all functional elements found in the
production (live) environment. For example, if your production environment
contains a cluster for Lotus Web Content Management servers,your staging
environment should too. Designing your staging environment in this manner
provides two potential benefits:
Testing
If you need to test a new configuration, install a patch or fix, and so
on, you need a place to test such changes prior to implementation on the
production servers. If the staging environment mirrors your production
environment, you can confirm such changes in staging.
Performance testing
In an ideal environment, staging is an exact duplicate of the production
environment. If this is the case, you can easily do performance testing
in the staging environment. If the staging environment contains all elements
of production but on a smaller scale, you can still use this environment
to run performance testing. However,you have to extrapolate the results,
which can lead to incorrect performance expectations.
Production (live)
The production (live) environment provides the live site to site visitors
and is tuned for fast rendering of Web pages and portlets. This environment
is often clustered for both failover and performance. Live environments
often include other performance-enhancing software and hardware to help
with caching, load balancing, and failover.
Moving content between environments
Workflow versus syndication
With multiple servers in a typical Lotus Web Content Management environment,
it is necessary to have a mechanism that can synchronize data between multiple
Lotus Web Content Management servers. In addition, it is a typical requirement
to have content pass through a formal approval process before it can be
viewed on the Web site. Lotus Web Content Management provides solutions
for both of these issues with workflow and syndication. New users of Lotus
Web Content Management frequently interchange these two terms as though
they are one and the same. However, these two capabilities are complementary,
and you must make sure that you understand the role of each within Lotus
Web Content Management.
Workflow
Workflow controls the creation, approval, and run-time (live) access to
an item. A workflow consists one or more stages. All content in Lotus Web
Content Management must go through a workflow process, even if that workflow
is a simple one-step, express approval.
| Tip: Content
cannot be seen by site visitors at run time (live) until the content is
approved. |
Syndication
Syndication is the method used by a Lotus Web Content Management server
to replicate data from one Lotus Web Content Management server to another.
Unlike workflow, syndication is not involved in the process of approving
content. Syndication is only responsible for replication of Lotus Web Content
Management assets across multiple servers. Its intended use is as an ongoing
process to keep a receiving server or subscriber up to date with the latest
content and design changes from the transmitting machine, which is also
known as the syndicator.
In versions of Web Content Management prior to V6, a syndicator spans
the entire data store. In version 6, it is possible to partition a data
store into multiple (virtual) libraries. You can configure a syndicator
to syndicate single or multiple libraries.
When creating a syndicator, with Lotus Web Content Management, you have
two choices for the granularity of items to be syndicated:
- All items: When configured with this setting,
all elements of the Lotus Web Content Management server are replicated
to the other server, including draft and expired content. Typically authoring
and development servers need access to all types of content for testing
purposes. This setting is common when syndicating between distributed authoring
servers or between an authoring server and a development server.
- All live Items: As opposed to the All items
setting, this option only replicates live content. Live content is defined
as content that has been approved via workflow (live), but is not yet past
its expiration date. Typically a production server only receives live data,
so this setting is common when syndicating from authoring to staging or
staging to production.
| Tip: Syndication
always syndicates copies of your technical assets, for example, presentation
templates, authoring templates, library components, and so forth. By default,
there is no setting to stop this. You can configure Lotus Web Content Management
to workflow these items at which point they follow the same rules as content. |
Refer to Section 5.1.2 for further information about syndication.