dubts with web content management

[tonizz]

Hi everybody,

I´m a new user in the alfresco world. I am developing a web portal with news, catalogues and so on. And I want the own users or web administrator to manage the content of that news. So that, I decided to use Alfresco with WCM.

One of my doubts is which is the right way to go. This is what I'm thinking rigth now. I'm creating a web project with its respective web forms, for example for the news. Once I have it,  I'm uploading the static content of the portal: the interface with menus, photos, … .

From this moment, a user could create a new news from alfresco and it could be published in a xml file contained in a news folder. I could have a folder with all the news, each one in a xml file.

I think this is the right way to go. Isn't it?????

Another doubt that I have and I don`t know which is the solution is the publishing. When from alfresco, a user will create a new news, the xml file will be stored in a web project folder, but I dont have it in my file system, I only can access this content through alfresco. All this make me think, that if I continue in this way, when in the future I will publish the portal for a public use I wont be able to use an usual tomcat, I will be forced to access through Alfresco.

Then, if my portal url is http://www.myportal.com, will I have to redirect the pages to show to alfresco contents????

Wasn´t it easier if I had the contents in a simple folder in my file system ??? I tried to simulate it with CIFS, i mean, as a web content or tomcat context, I had the CIFS folder \\machine_a\web projects\myportal but it is only possible with user spaces and not with web projects.

Has somebody faced with these requirements???

Which is your working way???

Am I so much wrong??

Thanks in advance!

[kvc]

I´m a new user in the alfresco world.

Welcome!

I am developing a web portal with news, catalogues and so on. And I want the own users or web administrator to manage the content of that news. So that, I decided to use Alfresco with WCM.

Clearly, we think you are making the right choice 🙂

From this moment, a user could create a new news from alfresco and it could be published in a xml file contained in a news folder. I could have a folder with all the news, each one in a xml file.

I think this is the right way to go. Isn't it?????

Yes, this is one approach.  A second approach is to have a template that generates a RSS newsfeed for those items in the news dir.  Any new or updated news item will execute its associated template and regenerate the feed.  You can then simply source the feed into your portlet.

This works well with other content types you may be publishing.  You may have an RSS dir and generate different feeds from your different content types that can all be source from one common folder.

Either way works, however.  An example of using RSS can be seen in our new 2.0.1 Website Framework (sample forms, jsp tags, templates, and content distributed in the /extras/wcm folder).

Another doubt that I have and I don`t know which is the solution is the publishing. When from alfresco, a user will create a new news, the xml file will be stored in a web project folder, but I dont have it in my file system, I only can access this content through alfresco. All this make me think, that if I continue in this way, when in the future I will publish the portal for a public use I wont be able to use an usual tomcat, I will be forced to access through Alfresco.

You should download and use Alfresco 2.0.1 for this.  2.0.1 is the new enterprise release (for those customers on maintenance) that can be found at http://customers.alfresco.com.  For those not on maintenance, a new Community build incorporating 2.0.1 fixes and features will be made available by end of week.  The difference between 2.0.1 and the Community build is that 2.0.1 is stable, tested fixes and extensions to the 2.0.0 codebase only; the new Community build coming end of the week is not tested and incorporates completed elements of our upcoming 2.1.0 release (early summer).

If you're just testing things out, the Community build is good for prototyping in the lab.  If you're doing a production deployment, getting a support contract and the supported enterprise release is the best option.    Community is always a bit more ahead of any enterprise release, and while good for test, doesn't necessarily have all the stability.

Now, to more directly respond to your question:

2.0.1 introduces our new content deployment service.  This provides the ability to replicate a snapshot to an Alfresco server on one or more remote servers.  These remote Alfresco instances are essentially headless (no exposing web client for authoring and publishing), slaves repos that are used under your portal solely for purposes of content delivery.  Your portal can do one of two things to source content from this repo:  call against an Alfresco API, or just read from the file-system.  Web projects can be mounted as virtual file-systems via CIFS, using the UNC mount path \\servername_a\\avm.  The CIFS interface is fast and optimized for run-time content delivery.

You should not need (or necessarily want) to use Alfresco's virtualization server in your run-time environment to serve content.

…I had the CIFS folder \\machine_a\web projects\myportal but it is only possible with user spaces and not with web projects.

Web projects are accessible via CIFS but by a separate mount path (see above).  That is because general knowledge workers just collaborating on docs via CIFS do not necessarily want access to the full view of the web production environment (they just create and edit documents that can use our new pre-built action in 2.0.1 to automatically transform their finalized docs to pdf and publish to a website via a rule). 

Take a look at this.  Should work quite nicely.

Keep us posted on your progress!

Kevin

[tonizz]

Thanks a lot kevin!! Your help has been great for me.

I have been able to make up the system getting the content of the portal by CIFS with the version 2.0.1. This could be a good option.

Navigating a bit more for internet, I have seen references to a "Alfresco API".
I have not found a good (explaining) documentation , only a api reference without examples, and I don´t know If it could be a good solution.

Could I get access to my web project from JAVA with this API ???? I think that if this solution is possible, we have a good solution, the most clever solution.

What do you think??

Thanks.

[kvc]

Yes, if you are not using CIFS, you can use the AVM Java API, which is exported through RMI.  Documentation is lacking on our wiki, however full Java docs are available.  wiki documentation is set for update in the near future. In the meantime, if you really want to dive deep into all the services the AVM offers, you can look here if you've downloaded the source tree:

\HEAD\root\projects\repository\source\java\org\alfresco\repo\avm

Please let me know if any further questions.

Kevin

[kevinr]

Also in Alfresco 2.1 the JavaScript and FreeMarker templating APIs have been enhanced to support accesss to avm stores i.e. you will be able to create templates and scripts that access your webprojects and the content/folders within those projects.

Thanks,

Kevin