MACROMEDIA CONTRIBUTE 3 - DEPLOYING AND PUBLISHING SERVER, Manual

Page 1: ...CONTRIBUTE 3 Deploying Contribute ...

Page 2: ...cess a third party website mentioned in this guide then you do so at your own risk Macromedia provides these links only as a convenience and the inclusion of the link does not imply that Macromedia endorses or accepts any responsibility for the content on those third party sites Apple Disclaimer APPLE COMPUTER INC MAKES NO WARRANTIES EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED REGARDING THE ENCLOSED COMPUTER SOFTWA...

Page 3: ...Deployment issues 8 User management models 16 Contribute user roles 17 Contribute and website security 18 Website connection distribution 21 Deploying Contribute across an organization 22 Approvals and site structure 22 Content design considerations 24 Contribute Publishing Services 29 Contribute case studies 29 Resources 36 ...

Page 4: ...4 Contents ...

Page 5: ...diting organizational charts Sharing information among team members through a departmental intranet This chapter which is intended for website administrators and IT professionals describes the best practices for deploying Contribute within an organization It explains how to set up Contribute in a variety of IT environments so that content editors and website administrators can enjoy the power and ...

Page 6: ...r role as a system administrator may intersect with the role of web designer A web designer can help you determine the editing and access requirements of your site and help you construct the site so that users with limited web design skills can easily update content Contribute gives you a great deal of power and flexibility in determining who can edit web pages on a website and what types of chang...

Page 7: ...rk and server permissions allow read write and modify access so that Contribute users can connect to the site and update pages For more information see Understanding network and server permissions on page 9 Install Contribute Install Contribute on the computer from which you ll administer the site create a connection to the website using Contribute and establish yourself as the Contribute administ...

Page 8: ... on page 11 Network paths and web addresses URLs on page 11 Contribute network connection types on page 12 Information about your website Before you install Contribute you must gather information about your organization s website infrastructure You need to find the answers to the following questions Where is the server on the network Who can access the server Do new users and permissions need to b...

Page 9: ...system of the server hosting the site as well as the web server software itself and the FTP server if you are using FTP are secure For the best practices related to securing your website from accidental and malicious tampering see the documentation provided with your server s operating system FTP and web server software Note You can set folder permissions to allow a user or group of users to modif...

Page 10: ...onnection keys you might have sent to users become disabled To learn more about Publishing Services see User management models on page 16 and Contribute Publishing Services on page 29 Web Server lets you configure Contribute to work with your website s specific web server configuration Because all websites vary somewhat in how they are set up the configuration options in the Web Server dialog box ...

Page 11: ...you provide Contribute then attempts to read the temporary file through HTTP using the web address you provide If Contribute succeeds in locating the temporary file the paths match and Contribute creates the connection If the paths don t match Contribute prompts you again for the correct path Note If your users will use FTP to connect to a website folder beneath the FTP Host folder you must provid...

Page 12: ... not overlap see Network paths and web addresses URLs on page 11 As the administrator you should create your connection at the highest level of access pertinent to the website you can define roles to allow users access at lower levels of the site depending on their specific access requirements To learn how to secure the administrative folder and the shared settings file it contains see Restricting...

Page 13: ...able connection protocol To learn more about SFTP and the benefits it provides see Secure FTP on page 14 If users will be accessing the website using FTP ensure that the folder has delete overwrite and rename privileges enabled When anonymous FTP is used these options are typically disabled by default so that users cannot update pages or add new pages to the website When you create an FTP connecti...

Page 14: ... SSH2 protected network connections To learn more about SFTP see the documentation supplied with your server s operating system and SFTP server To learn more about SSH2 see the SSH Communications Security website at www ssh com Note Contribute supports only password based authentication Other authentication methods such as certificate based authentication public key and Kerberos are not supported ...

Page 15: ... the WebDAV site For example suppose that this is the URL of your site www mysite com This might be the WebDAV URL www mysite 81 com Appending the port number 81 to the site s domain name specifies the network address used by WebDAV WebDAV enabled sites often have their own user name and password requirements You can create these on an individual basis or you can create a group user name and passw...

Page 16: ...ate user roles that restrict editing privileges within a site User management also provides a mechanism that lets users easily connect to a website Contribute has two user management models manual site connections and sites managed using the Publishing Services User Directory service Manual connections let you communicate connection information to users who then create their own connections either...

Page 17: ...as three default roles Administrator Publisher and Writer Administrator identifies the administrator of the site who can create new roles and modify existing ones add users to the site and send connections to new users so that they can access the site A site can have more than one person assigned to the administrative role Publisher identifies users who can create and edit pages as well as publish...

Page 18: ...ded with both your server s operating system and web server software Job Title Contribute Role Privileges System administrator Administrator Installs Contribute creates connections to the website and defines Contribute roles appropriate to the magazine s job functions The system administrator consults the designer on how to set up role settings so that other members of the magazine s staff have ap...

Page 19: ...page to version A and you used Contribute to edit an image in version B When you roll back to version A you will not see the current version of the image You need to also roll back the image independently of the page rollback To learn more about rollbacks see Enabling and disabling rollbacks in Macromedia Contribute Help Restricting access to administrative folders When you create a site connectio...

Page 20: ...iting access to files and folders and other security issues relevant to the Apache web server see the documentation supplied with your Apache distribution Microsoft IIS web servers To prevent unauthorized users from accessing Contribute administrative folders under Microsoft IIS use access control lists ACLs to prevent read access by unauthenticated users of the operating system as well as by clie...

Page 21: ...s all the information that Contribute requires to connect to a site The information in the connection key is encrypted with a 128 bit algorithm for security purposes Users cannot read or change the connection or role information in the connection key Administrators create these password protected connection keys using the Send Connection Key feature of the Administer Websites dialog box The keys c...

Page 22: ...rosoft Windows Installer SDK or you can purchase InstallShield DevStudio and InstallShield Tuner The InstallShield tools let you open an Microsoft Windows Installer MSI installer database modify the installation settings and contents and save your changes as either a transform or as a new MSI database that will install your customizations To learn more about the Contribute MSI installer see the Co...

Page 23: ...pprovals and site structure 23 The following figure shows an example of a file sent for approval and the files and folders that are created when you send a user of your website a page for their approval ...

Page 24: ...gresses through the approval workflow When the recipient of the page requiring approval chooses to view it Contribute creates a LCK lock file for the page within the website and a CHK checkout file in the WIPMetaData folder These files indicate that the file is in use by the recipient and tracks changes made to the file The filename extensions mno and csi used by the approval feature help to preve...

Page 25: ...ature is enabled so that files are not overwritten as they work in a collaborative environment All Dreamweaver users should ensure that any pages they are editing have been properly checked out to prevent the inadvertent overwriting of pages When a user checks out a file from the remote server Dreamweaver locks the file No other member of the web team can work on that file Macromedia Contribute co...

Page 26: ...oftware contribute Web page templates Templates are powerful design tools that help control which areas of a page can be updated If you use the same or similar layout across several web pages templates let you quickly redesign or update multiple pages at once Templates are also well suited for groups that update a website s content collaboratively because they let you standardize web page layouts ...

Page 27: ...is to create multiple editable regions with precise uses To learn more about creating successful templates for use with Contribute see the Contribute product page at www macromedia com software contribute Shared assets The shared assets feature lets you create a library of assets such as images Macromedia Flash content or Dreamweaver library items that users can insert into web pages You can restr...

Page 28: ...hed page s library item is updated from Dreamweaver when the item changes For more information about Dreamweaver library items see the Dreamweaver documentation Secure content using SSIs Server side includes SSIs let you maintain consistent page elements such as navigation headers and footers In most cases the content contained in an SSI is not intended to be edited by a content provider and Contr...

Page 29: ...chive for reference E mail notification service keeps users informed about the status of drafts they are working on without requiring the user to start Contribute The service sends e mail to users whenever someone sends them a draft requiring their attention and keeps them informed about the status of drafts they ve sent such as when a page is published to the site To use Contribute Publishing Ser...

Page 30: ...you create and test web content without making it live on your public facing website Only when content has been approved are web pages and their associated files copied from the staging to the production web server When used with Contribute a staging server adds an extra measure of security because you can configure your staging server so that Contribute specific files such as administrative folde...

Page 31: ...connections In the following example there are several departmental intranet sites each of which needs access restricted to members of the given department To accomplish this the administrator creates a separate Contribute connection for each department s folder within the website In addition each department has its own set of Dreamweaver templates on which to base new pages When connecting users ...

Page 32: ... the optional CPS you can integrate your organization s user directory services such as LDAP or Active Directory with Contribute This gives you individual control over which user is granted access to a particular website and the role to which they are assigned For this case study consider a large organization with several decentralized websites In addition to a public facing site that provides inf...

Page 33: ...he sites they can access are listed in the following table Although this user list is oversimplified it demonstrates one possible scenario for the way that users within an organization might be assigned access to websites This scenario divides users according to their role within the organization and assumes that they have full editing and publishing privileges within their respective sites Certai...

Page 34: ...r individual users and roles CPS integrates with the organization s LDAP service which authenticates user access to various network resources In this case the LDAP authentication is the first step in granting access to websites hosted on various servers within the organization The Contribute roles further define user privileges within a website determining the degree to which users can modify page...

Page 35: ...your production server This also lets you eliminate the presence of unnecessary files from a server with public access To use Contribute with a staging server you create a connection to the staging server s website Users can update content on the staging server Any temporary drafts that are created during the review process or drafts of files that are in the process of being updated but not yet pu...

Page 36: ...about the Contribute administrative files see Contribute site structure on page 11 and Approvals and site structure on page 22 Resources For more information about designing websites with Macromedia Dreamweaver for use with Contribute and the best practices to use when deploying Contribute see the following resources To help you learn more about Contribute and the best practices for creating web c...

Page 37: ...k 9 connection types about 12 path and web addresses 11 P permissions 9 network 9 server 9 Publishing Services case study 32 E mail Notification service 29 Log service 29 User Directory service about 29 R roles about 17 Administrator 17 default 17 example of 18 Publisher 17 Writer 17 rollbacks security 19 S security about 18 rollbacks 19 server permissions 9 SFTP connection information 14 shared a...

Page 38: ...38 Index ...