A paper
in the InfoGlue Series
InfoGlue -
User Manual
Author: Mattias Bogeblad
Version 2.4.6
© 2004 Formedia and Mattias Bogeblad. All rights reserved.
Permission is granted
to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of
the GNU Free
Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free
Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections. A copy of the license is
included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documentation License”.
Sponsors
We wish to thank
Nominet
Note
All information in
this document is the property of Formedia and Mattias Bogeblad. Use and
distribution of the document, or of the information in it, is defined by the
terms in the license “GNU Free Documentation License”.
What parts are there in InfoGlue
InfoGlue pages behind the curtain
Presenting the administrative tools
Creating new folder – structuring
your info
WYSIWYG Editor and InfoGlue features
connected
Creating a new site node / page
Page Components – building sites/portals
General Notes on administration
Publication process in InfoGlue
Access control system in InfoGlue
Controlling access to the tools
Controlling access to contents
Controlling access to pages /
SiteNodes
Edit on sight – simplified content
editing
Configuring the WYSIWYG editor
Appendix A GNU Free Documentation
License
This document was written to give users working with different parts of
the system a useful manual. Hopefully the information herein will make users
more productive and comfortable with the various aspects of the system. Many
users might find it useful to read some of the document to get an overview of
how InfoGlue works and some will only use it as a reference guide. Whatever the
use, hope the information is valuable and easy to understand.
The document will not include information about maintenance or
development as there are other documents that will specialize in these matters.
The aim is to describe the basic concepts and how you use the various parts of
the system.
Since the last version
of this document a lot of new features has been implemented in the platform but
we will only describe the things users interact with in this document. The
administration manual and developer manual contains a lot of complementing
information. Also look at the changelog for each release for tips on new
features.
This document is
always a work in progress so mail any suggestions to bogeblad@yahoo.com and I will try to improve it as the platform
evolves.
If you need more help with the platform you should
consider me. The company I’m currently work for offer a wide range of services
around the platform including training, support, analysis, implementation,
integration and debugging etc. You cannot find better help on InfoGlue issues.
General concepts
InfoGlue is a Content
Management System. Content Management is very much another word for how to
manage a company’s or organization’s information internally and externally. As
content management is such a broad term we often say InfoGlue is a Web Content
Management System. That is – InfoGlue helps organizations manage their
information mainly targeted for the Web both internally, in intranets etc, and
externally in public websites and extranets.
What parts are there in InfoGlue
InfoGlue is a pure
Java platform. It is completely database driven which means both the management
tool and the public sites are using information from a database. The platform
consists of several different applications but from a users perspective the two
important ones are the administrative tool and the different delivery engines.
The administrative
tools are discussed in detail here and are where you manage all aspects of your
site. The delivery engines are specialized in presenting sites to users based
on the data managed by the tools. By default InfoGlue installs 3 delivery
engines. The first is the working version which presents the working version of
the site. There is also a version called staging site which shows the site in a
preview mode so the publisher can check that the site will look good after
publication. The last delivery engine is the one that shows the live site to
visitors. This simple sketch shows how a simple setup could look:
InfoGlue is a bit
different than many other web content management systems. We have chosen to
strongly separate the information that is to be shown to visitors from the form
in which it is shown in. This is what in general terms are called separating
content from presentation. The implication is that there are two different
aspects to manage – the information itself on the one side, and the layout and
flow of the websites presenting the information on the other side.
We usually call
information in different forms in InfoGlue for “Content”. A “Content” in
InfoGlue can be text, image, word-files, animations or anything else of
informational value. There are no format limitations. Everything that concerns
information/content is managed in what we call the content tool for obvious
reasons. You can view it as a place were all information is stored and managed no
matter where it should be used later on.
You can for example use it as an image bank or a file-bank if you want
to and never bother about the web at all.
Many other web content
management systems are very page centric. This means that they require you to
fill in the information specific to how it will look on a specific page in the
site. They focus on how the information should be shown and not on how to keep
the information structured. Often this results in having to type in the same
information many times if it’s to appear on several pages on the site or on
different sites. That will never happen in InfoGlue as reuse is already
prepared for. The people responsible for the information focus on the texts and
not on the layout or website.
The presentation/site
structure part of the InfoGlue system is what handles building specific
websites and it is called the “Structure tool”. With this tool you manage the
site structure and chose which information to put on which pages and with which
layout etc. You can also define links between pages among many other things.
This division is very
important to understand before working in InfoGlue. The concept is very strong
once learned and much more flexible than page centric approaches but the
learning curve is a bit steeper so don’t give up if you find it hard in the
beginning – it will pay off later.
The chapters are very
much divided into the tools in InfoGlue. Each tool and its functionality will
be described in detail from a user’s perspective. In the end there are also
more specialized trails describing a concept or a process in InfoGlue. We will
however begin with a chapter describing the fundamental concepts in detail.
InfoGlue pages behind the curtain
This chapter was meant
to give users an overview of how a page is technically structured and rendered.
It is very important to understand for developers and advanced users but
ordinary users may skip this chapter.
To describe we have
the very simple officestand.com site. The basic look of a page would be
something like the page below. Important
– this part does not reflect the demo-site shipped with InfoGlue at the moment
but we use the layout as an example and the demo-site will be updated later on.
This page is very
simple but the technique is the same no matter what layout we would use or what
information we want to show. The page layout is controlled by components.
The page you are
looking at could be structured in many different ways, depending on the
developer’s choices, but in this example it is composed out of many
small/medium-sized components. A component can have any size and we could for
example have one big component controlling the entire page if we want to but
that would mean we could not manage the layout in detail for different pages.
Instead we have used smaller components responsible for only a part of the
page. For example there is a header component which is responsible for showing
the logotype, flags and the navigation.
The concept of an
InfoGlue component is very similar to the “includes”-concept found in many web
environments like ASP/JSP. The difference is that the components can have
dynamic properties and can be managed graphically in InfoGlue by non coders.
The structure of a
page is better shown in this drawing. Note especially that it is by assigning
contents and pages to appropriate components that you actually give the
components enough data to present information to the user. The component
themselves most often only contain layout logic and knows how to fetch the
information you assign to it.
Hopefully this section
has helped you to understand the basics of how a webpage is built in InfoGlue.
We will now take you through the different tools to show you where the work is
done.
In all chapters we
will assume that you have logged into the InfoGlue administrative tool. If you
don’t know how to find it or have questions please consult you administrator.
Presenting the administrative tools
InfoGlue comes with
tools for managing all aspects of your system. They all share a common
foundation in which you can reach the different parts. The starting point for
the tools are usually http://servername:portnumber/infoglueCMS (your adminstrator will give you the exact
address). When you first go there you will be asked to login which you do with
the information given to you by the administrative personnel. After your first
login you will be shown the standard tools.
Description of main
areas:
- Marked in Blue – This is the list of tools available to
the user. The different tools will be given each own chapter later in this
document. The tool is represented by a tab which can be clicked on to
activate the tool which then will show it’s interface in area 3. Which
tabs are available to which users are possible to set for each role in the
management section also described later.
- Marked in Light blue – This is the tool settings and action
area. Here you can select which language the tools internal information
and labels should be in. You can reach the help-system, open a new tool
window, log out and reach your personal tool settings. More on the
personal settings later.
- Marked in Red - This area is where the tool functionality
is shown for the tool tab you pressed in area 1. The tools can look very
different depending on what they do.
- Marked in Yellow - The footer shows the version number of
InfoGlue. It also shows who you are logged in as currently.
From InfoGlue there is
a “My Settings”-link in the header that lets you come to a personal settings
area. The settings you do here will have to do with your preferences in how the
tools should behave when you are logged in and working with InfoGlue. In time
more things will be customizable. Currently the view looks like this:
As you probably
understand from the screenshot the available settings are:
- Which language should be default in the
tools when I log in.
- Which tool of the tools I have access to
should be shown by default when I login.
- Change password by clicking on the link.
You will have to state your old password.
As stated before the
Content Tool is used for storing all information in a structured way. In this
tool you never worry about layouts or where to present it. The users instead
concentrate on maintaining the information itself, including texts, images and
other assets you want to handle in InfoGlue.
The typical way of
dividing work is to let all personnel be allowed to manage information they are
qualified to edit in this tool but to centralize layout decisions and site
structural management. As this is most common setup the content tool is the
mostly used tool of them all.
Description of main
areas:
- Marked in Red - Navigational area showing the current
content repository. The structure resembles the folder hierarchy you have
on your computers file system and you are fully free to structure the
contents in any way you want. There are only two different types of items
in the tree; folders and contents.
The tree is available either as pure HTML or as a Java-applet. The user can switch tree at the bottom of the area. The user can also expand the tree sideways if it contains long names. This is done by clicking on the right-arrow in the bottom right. It will expand for a few times and then go back to minimal width.
- Marked in Blue - Repository and search area. Here you can
select which repository you want to view by changing it in the drop-down.
The last repository you worked with is remembered during your session if
you switch tools and similar. However – each time you log in the first
repository is chosen by default.
You are also able to search among the repository content in the search field. The search can not search binary assets like word or PDF-files yet. For now it only supports ordinary content. InfoGlue also supports more advanced searches and can also replace occurrances. More on that later.
- Marked in Cyan - This area is where the functionality is
reached. The actual buttons vary depending on what item or view you are
working on in the main area (4).
- Marked in
Creating new folder – structuring your info
Most often you want to
have structure in which you can store your contents in. This is done with
folders in InfoGlue. A folder can contain other any number of folders and
contents so you can create your own hierarchies any way you want. To create a
new folder you must first select where to put it. You do this by clicking on
the folder you wish to put it beneath.
For example – if I
want to put a new folder beneath products in the officestand2 content
repository I mark the folder Articles:
The menu above the
main area will now change and reveal the functional buttons available for this
folder. Now click on the “New Folder”-button and you will be asked to enter a
folder name.
InfoGlue now also
supports treating folders as contents as well. This gives great flexibility in
some cases so you must choose what content type the folder should be of as you
do with ordinary contents. In some cases people decide to create a special
Folder content type but you can use any content type. Here we use the ordinary
“Article” content type.
You also must state
when the folder-content should be published and unpublished. You are able to
set the date to a future date and then the content will not be visible until
that date. To change the date you click on the calendar symbol. Default the publish
date is set to today’s date and that the expire date is 50 years ahead so you
can probably go with the defaults in most cases.
Then enter a name of
the folder and click the “Save”-button and you have completed creating a new
folder.
As this is one of the
most common tasks it should be understood thoroughly even though it’s not a
very complex process. As in the case where you create a new folder you must
first mark the parent folder in which you want to put the new content.
After you have done
that you just click “New Content”-button and you are shown this interface:
Start with stating the
name of the content. This name is only used internally and should be named as
naturally as possible. There are some limitations to the length of the name so
try to keep it relatively short but descriptive.
Next you state when
the folder-content should be published and unpublished. You are able to set the
date to a future date and then the content will not be visible until that date.
To change the date you click on the calendar symbol. Default the publish date
is set to today’s date and that the expire date is 50 years ahead.
The calendar is quite
easy to understand and when you have marked the desired date you click “OK” and
the date is transferred to the main view.
You then do the same
for expire-date if you want to define a special expire date. The content will
then be removed visually at that date.
The last thing you must do is to choose which content type you wish to base
this content on. The content type is in short a definition of what attributes
and properties a certain information-item contains. This means that the input
will contain different fields depending on the content type so in that sense
you can almost see it as a template for a specific content. A Curriculum Vitae
is for example built up of other sections and meta info than an image is. The
content types are defined dynamically in the system by the administrators.
To select the content
type you want to use just select the right one in the select box.
Now you are ready to save. Just click the
“Save”-button and the content is created. Now the screen will look something
like this and will show the editing view for this sites master language so you
can start entering texts directly.
The next section will cover editing of the
language versions.
Editing language versions
In the previous
section we ended the section with a view of a newly created content and the
master language version of that content. So if you have English as default
language on the site you are working on the English version will be shown
first. If you press the “Content cover”-button you will be shown this view
which shows the meta data and language versions for this content:
Some of the fields in
that view are already known to you but the lower part is new. The first new
thing is if the content are to be protected or not. This is covered later on.
After that InfoGlue shows a list of languages-versions that are possible to
edit. The left side shows which language you can edit and the right side shows
what state it currently is in. If no one has edited the version it will “Not
created”. Else it will either be “working”, “publish” or “published” depending
on what work is being done.
The last part shows
any relations this content has to other contents or if pages are using this
content right now. More on that later.
To edit a language
version click on the language name. The view will be the same as the one before
and the interface is based on the content type. In this case the
“Article”-content type.
If the persons setting
up the content types has done their job well the headlines over each field will
be enough to guide you to what information is to be filled in I which field.
After you have edited the fields you click the “Save”-button and your first
language version is created.
WYSIWYG Editor and InfoGlue features connected
Before reading further
I urge all of you to consider the flaws of editing content through a
WYSIWYG-editor. The very idea of mixing the information itself with
presentation tags destroys the value severely.
This is probably why
most of you looked at InfoGlue – because we use a more structured information
model. We feel that information should be handled very separate from it’s
presentation which means the templates themselves should handle all
presentation tags and only present pure info. Once you have enabled the WYSIWYG
editor you will get information that is mixed with information about style,
indentation and tables etc.
Now – we also recognise the value for users to be able to handle some
information this way which is why we have included the WYSIWYG at all. Just
make sure not to overuse it. If you do – why not stay with FrontPage.
Anyway – there are
some nice features in InfoGlue which enhances the normal behavior of the editor
which by the way is “FCKEditor”. This manual will not go through the normal
features as they are very similar to those in normal text editors. Instead we
will talk about the extra features added by InfoGlue.
Default an attribute
with the WYSIWYG enabled will look like this:
As you can see there
are far to many buttons available as standard. Most organizations will want to
limit the number of buttons available to the users and also customize which
users should have access to which buttons. All of this is configured on either
repository, role or user level and will be described later in a separate
chapter.
The buttons which has
special InfoGlue-functionality are the marked ones.
- The button
represents the link handling in the
editor. Inside that a InfoGlue-feature is added to assist the user to make
a link from a text to another page in the site or to an InfoGlue asset
(PDF, Image etc). This is called an Inline Link.
- The button
represents the image handling in the
editor. Inside that a InfoGlue-feature is added to assist the user to show
an InfoGlue-image inline in the text. The image can come from any content
on any site.
Inline links
If you want to link to
an InfoGlue-page or to an InfoGlue asset from you text you first write the text
that should be linked and mark it. After it is marked you press the 
button.
Next the following
dialog will ask you to enter the URL you wish to link to. Default the link is
an external URL but you can also click on the “Browse server”-button to
activate the InfoGlue dialog and link to pages/assets in InfoGlue – also known
as inline link.
We get the following
dialog if we click “Browse Server”:
The view shows the structure tree by default but there is also a tab for
asset browsing in the head. If you wish to link to another page in InfoGlue you
select the page in the orange tree and then press save. If you wish to link to
a PDF, image or similar you have to change view in the head (marked with red).
The following view will be shown:
You then navigate and
click on the content and select a contents assets which will be shown to the
right for each content. You can also add new images by pressing the link
“Upload new image”. When you have selected an asset on a content you can press
“Save” and there will be a link in the text to that asset. If you mark that
link and press the same button again it will show the screen with the
properties of the link editable.
Inline images
If you want to use an
InfoGlue-assets and especially images in your text you just have to position
your cursor where you want the image to end up and then press the 
button.
When done you will get
the following dialog which is standard for FCKEditor which is the
WYSIWYG-editor InfoGlue uses:
You can of course
state an ordinary URL to any image but if you want to use assets/images you
uploaded in InfoGlue you press the “Browse Server”-button. This will show the
following interface:
To the left is the content
tree as in the content tool and to the right all assets available for a certain
content will show. In this example we have clicked on “Global contents” in the
tree and as you see it had 2 flags available. To insert one I just click on the
one I want and press the “Save”-button.
The view will change
back to the previous one and now the selected image is shown in the preview
field.
To finish the
insertion of this image now just click the “OK”-button and the result will be
the image inside your text area.
Asset handling / file upload
Often, when handling
web content, texts are just a part of the information that meets the visitor.
Most often you also want to handle other kind of information like images,
documents and sound-files as well. In InfoGlue such content are called Assets
and they can be uploaded to the appropriate content.
An example could be
that you have an article which introduces a large PDF-document which the user
can download. The appropriate way would be to attach the PDF-asset to the
introducing article probably. There are other ways as well and it depends a bit
on what you wish to achieve.
If you want to upload
an asset to a content you must attach it to a language version. The reason is
that most often with most assets you want to be able to upload different files
to different languages. There are fallback possibilities in the presentation
later if the file is valid for all languages. Be aware that you must first save
a first version of an article for the “Attach file”-button to appear.
Now that you have a
content version you just click on the “Attach file”-button. The following
dialog will be shown:
This view requires you
to state an asset key. This key is used by developers if you have attached a
lot of different assets to the same article or if they have different meaning
or format for similar images. Use a good key or a predefined if the system
administrator has predefined them. To view predefined keys just click the
drop-box down arrow and select the right key. If no suitable keys are defined
you write your own key. “PDF”, “NormalImage” or “Flag_se” could all be suitable
keys depending on context.
Next you browse your
hard drive for the file you want to upload.
After you have
selected it just press the “Save”-button and the dialog will report when the
file was uploaded. Now you can continue upload assets if you have more or you
just press “Close” when you are satisfied.
Now you will notice
that last in the language version will be a list of the assets uploaded. If
it’s an uploaded image a thumbnail will be shown – otherwise a suitable icon.
To edit an existing
asset you just click the edit link below it. You can click the asset to preview
it and the “Delete”-button lets you delete it from the system.
Image editor
If you have uploaded a
gif or jpg you can click the edit-link and get to the image editor which
currently is very experimental but works somewhat ok. You get the image in the
main field and a small palette of tools to the left.
The image area is
markable – just klick somewhere on the image and drag to another point and a
rectangle is formed. The picture below shows the rectangle and the non selected
parts are greyed out.
When you have selected
an area of the image you can use the crop tool. It looks like this
and means you can cut away all except the
marked area. The result would be:
There is also a image
scaling tool which is represented by the icon
When you click that you don't have to
mark an area fist but you get this dialog:
What you do is to
state what width and height the image should have after the scale or only one
of the fields. The first field is the width and the second height.
When you are done with
the image and wants to save it just press the save-icon and the dialog below is
shown:
Just state a asset key
and press the “Save”-button.
Categorization
of contents
This part will assume
you will read the part in the management tool about categorization. In this
example we will just assume that someone has set up the different category
areas we should be able to categorize on. Last in each content version the
available categories are located.
To categorize a
content on “Area” for example you select the topic area suitable in the drop
down and press the “Add”-button. You can choose more than one area and the
categories will be shown in a list. It will look like this:
So what we have
achieved by doing this is to give the developers additional information so they
could build a site customized to only show information categorized to be about
Moving content/folders
Often you want to move
information as the site changes or you want to reorganize things. This is
easily done in InfoGlue. Just mark the folder or content you wish to move and
then use one of the “Move”-button in the function area. When you move your
mouse over the button another button is shown and the difference is that the
lower ones can be used to move any number of contents to a folder instead of
just the current content.
When you click the
first button the system will ask you where you want to move the item. You will
be shown a new content tree where you select the new parent/the folder you wish
to move the item to and then you press the “Save”-button. You will have to
confirm this action.
The tree will reload
on the left side and the move will be visible.
If you press the “Move
X Contents”-button you will be shown a more complex view where you by dragging
or using the “Add”-button can add more contents to move to one folder. It will
look like this:
To the right are the
contents that will be moved and you can add more either by marking and dragging
them from the tree to the square area to the right or using the “Add”-button
after marking a content in the tree. Then press next and choose destination
folder etc.
Delete content/folders
To delete contents
that you don’t want anymore for sure you can easily do so. Just mark the
content/folder in the tree to the left and press the “Delete content”-button.
This will delete the
content and it will not be possible to undo this operation later. You will have
to confirm the action before it’s carried out. After you are done the tree will
reload and you will now see that the item ha been deleted.
When a site is created
initially or when a whole lot of contents are changed at the same time it’s
often a very boring task to set all of the versions to “Publish”-state so that
they can be published. There is a shortcut available however. If you mark a
folder or content you can press the button “Submit to publish”.
The following dialog
will now open:
Here you must first
state a comment to the publishing. This will be shown to the publisher. Then
you select all the versions you wish publish or submit for publishing in the
list or you select all by clicking the “Select all”-button. When you are done,
press the “Save”-button and all the marked items will be propagated to the
publisher or published.
Only publishers can
use the “Publish”-button and that way publish it directly. You can also choose
to notify publishers when submitting to publishing.
When a content has been published at
least once it can also be unpublished. If you mark the content or folder in the
tree you can use the “Unpublish”-buttons marked below. The first button just
lets you unpublish the last version of the content but if you want to unpublish
all versions you use the second button.
The screen will list
all content below and including the content you selected which can be
unpublished. Just mark the contents you wish to unpublish and either use the
“Unpublish versions”-button which directly unpublishes it or the “Request
unpublish”-button which will ask the editor in chief to do it for you.
Show History
In later versions of
InfoGlue there is a content version history view. Here one can see all versions
of the content and even compare versions. You reach it by clicking the history
button on the content cover toolbar.
The view will be:
If you mark two
versions in this view and press the “Compare versions”-button you will see a
comparison view highlighting the differences in the articles.
In the content tool
there are a search feature so you can find texts easily.
The normal search I
the header only searches the current repository. If you click on the
“Advanced”-button you get more options and we suggest you use this. It looks
like this:
The search options
here should be pretty easy to understand and the more you can specify the
faster and better the search will be possible to narrow it down. Here you can
also choose to search more than one repository. Just click the boxes for each
repository you want to search.
When you enter a
search text and press search the result screen looks like this:
If you want to use the
replace function you click on the “Replace”-link and that activates some new
fields. Then enter a replace-text and check which contents you want to perform the replace on. Then perform the
replace by pressing the “Replace”-button.
In the content tool
there are a button called “Execute task”. This is actually a way to extend the
tool with your companies own routines and interfaces tailor made for you. The
first view will therefore be a list of available tasks when you click that
button.
Hopefully you know
which task you should execute by the names they have. When you click on the one
you want to run that task will continue the wizard so the steps will differ
from task to task.
Examples of tasks
could be exporting contents, creating sub sites with a certain structure or
control all links on the site. Only the imagination is the limit to what can be
done.
This tool is as stated
before used to build/maintain a specific website. An aspect of site development
is that many times a site launch is delayed because the information on it is
not complete. If you organize your personnel you can let people enter all base
information in the content tool before or parallel with the development of the
actual site-templates and structures. This will shorten time to market very
much.
This setup also means
that when a website is to be built the developers / managers already has the
information available and are only required to present it to the user in a
nicely structured site.
Of course there are
other possible setups but it is essential to understand that the structure tool
is only used to build the site structure and choose what information goes
where, in what form and how the sites pages are related and navigated between.
Description of main areas:
- Marked in Red - Navigational area showing the current
repository’s site structure. You can look at the structure like a
hierarchy of pages. Simplified - each node in the tree represents a page.
You are fully free to structure the sites pages in any way you want.
The tree is available either as pure HTML or as a Java-applet. The user can switch tree at the bottom of the area. It is also possible to expand the tree area to the right if needed. The small arrow in the bottom right corner will expand the area in 3 steps and then return to the original position.
- Marked in Blue - Repository area. Here you can select
which repository/site you want to manage by changing it in the drop-down.
The last repository you worked with is remembered during your session if
you switch tools and similar. However – each time you log in the first
repository is chosen by default.
- Marked in Cyan - This area is where the functionality is
reached. The actual buttons vary depending on what item or view you are
working on in the main area (4).
- Marked in
Creating a new site node / page
When you want to
create or extend your site you often want to create new pages in it. In
InfoGlue this is done by adding a new “Site Node” which is very much the same
as a Webpage. A Site Node can contain any number of other site nodes so you can
create your own hierarchies any way you want. To create a new site node you
must first select where to put it. You do this by clicking on the site node you
wish to put it beneath.
For example – if I
want to put a new site node beneath the first page in the officestand2
structure repository you mark the node in the left navigation:
The menu above the
main area will now change and reveal the functional buttons available for this
site node. Now click on the “New Site Node”-button and you will be asked to
enter a site node name.
In the create screen
you will also have to choose which type of page this will be. The types of
pages available are defined by the administrator and basically mean it is
possible to handle a user request to a page in very different ways and that the
things possible to specify for that page is defined for each type.
For basic users I
would recommend you get a guide from the development team of which type to use
for which pages. The suggested way in 1.3 is to use component-based pages but
it’s really up to you.
A feature in InfoGlue
is the ability to save pages as template pages. This means that the new site
node will be a copy of the template site node when it comes to which components
it has etc. As you can see I have created such a template and made a image
which shows it’s characteristics. The user who wants to use such a page template
just marks it. In a clean installation no such thumbnails swill be shown.
When you know which
type you want to use - enter a name, edit publish/unpublish dates, chose site
node type, choose page template if you want to and click the “Save”-button. You
will now see the created page with the properties available on it. I have
chosen a “ComponentPage”-type for this example but not chosen any page template
as we want to demonstrate other aspects as well.
The site node view
contains the following properties:
- Site Node name: The internal name of the
page/site node. Just for internal navigation purpose.
- Publish date. You state when the page
should be published. You are able to set the date to a future date and
then the page will not be visible until that date. To change the date you
click on the calendar symbol. Default the publish date is set to today’s
date. The calendar is quite easy to understand.
- Expire date: these fields let you specify
when the page should be unpublished automatically. The page will be
removed from the site at that date. Default, the expire date is set to 10
years ahead.
- Content type: This field let’s you specify
in which content type we send data to the browser requesting the page.
This is normally not changed unless you have a very particular need or you
are a developer doing css or JavaScript pages.
- Current state: This is the state switch
you can use when you want to propagate the working copy up to the
publishing mode. Read more about the publishing process in that chapter.
- Protect page: This lets you state that the
current page should be protected on the site through the built in extranet
solution within InfoGlue. The property can have 3 different states.
- No – means that the page is definitely
not protected.
- Yes – means that the page is protected
and that only those roles defined under the page “Access rights”-button
are allowed to access it.
- Inherited – this means that we want to
use the same settings for this property as the parent node has. So if the
parent node is protected this will also be protected. This is the default
setting.
- Disable page cache: This means that you
can choose to turn of the page caching for a page. The page caching is
used to get the best response-times as possible for a site and should only
be turned of in cases where the content is really dynamic on the page in
question or if integration towards other systems is done. The property can
have 3 different states.
- No – means that the page-cache is not
turned of.
- Yes – means that the page-cache is turned
off.
- Inherited – this means that we want to
use the same settings for this property as the parent node has. So if the
parent nodes cache is turned off this will also be. This is the default
setting and means in most cases that the page-cache is on.
- Disable edit on sight: As described in a
later chapter there is a function called “Edit on sight” in InfoGlue. As
the edit on sight decorates the HTML output in the structure view of the
site (i.e. it adds special tags) it can in some cases mess up the templates
if they are very special. If that happens and you don’t want to use the
edit on sight functionality on that page you can turn it off. The property
can have 3 different states.
- No – means that the functionality is not
turned of.
- Yes – means that the functionality is
turned off for this page.
- Inherited – this means that we want to
use the same settings for this property as the parent node has. So if the
parent nodes “Edit-On-Sight” is turned off this one’s will also be. This
is the default setting and means in most cases that the functionality is
turned on.
- Disable languages: You can state that a
page does not support a certain language.
- No – means that all the sites languages
are available on this page.
- Yes – means that those languages not
marked as disables or marked as enabled (will only be visible when yes)
are not available to the user on that page.
- Inherited – this means that we want to
use the same settings for this property as the parent node has.
- In InfoGlue there is an area showing contents
and pages referencing this page just like in the content tool. This is a
great help when looking to delete or move information.
- The binding area: A page/site Node can
have bindings which are basically a way for the users to specify global
information resources for the page. You can assign templates and articles
and navigational aspects this way. What bindings you are able to set are
defined by the administrator in the management tool. My ComponentPage-type
had none but here is how a different page type could look:
There are two kinds of bindings available at the moment. On the left side you see the content bindings. A content binding gives you a way to specify what information to show on the page. On the right side you have the structural bindings. Those give you a way of defining relations to other pages within the site. A good example is defining what pages should be part of the page navigation etc.
To assign a binding of either sort you click on the name of the binding and follow the guide that follows. You should get a guide from your developer/administrator which explains the bindings your specific site has and what effect they will have on the page.
Sometimes you want to
move a page from one area of the site to another as the site changes or you
want to reorganize things. This is easily done in InfoGlue. Just mark the site
node you wish to move and then click the “Move”-button in the function area.
As with the content
tool InfoGlue 2.0 now comes with a multimove feature which lets you move many
nodes at once. That button shows up when you move your mouse over the
“Move”-button.
When you click on the
move button the system will ask you where you want to move the item. You will
be shown a new structure tree where you select the new parent/the site node you
wish to move the item to and then you press the “Save”-button. You will have to
confirm this action. The tree will reload on the left side and the move will be
visible.
When you click the
“Move X SiteNodes”-button InfoGlue will present you with a two step wizard. The
first screen lets you add all nodes you wish to move to the right side list.
To add a site node you
either drag it to the square area on the right or mark it and press the
“Add”-button. When you have added all nodes you want to move you press next and
choose the destination node under which the nodes should be placed.
Delete site nodes
To
delete site nodes that you don’t want anymore for sure you can easily do so.
Just mark the site node in the tree to the left and press the “Delete site
node”-button.
This will delete the
site node and it will not be possible to undo this operation later. You will
have to confirm the action before it’s carried out. After you are done the tree
will reload and you will now see that the item ha been deleted. An important
not is that you cannot delete a published site node. You have to first
unpublish it.
Mass-submit to publishing
As with contents it’s
nice to have the possibility to mass publish structure as well. When a site is
created initially or when a whole lot of pages are changed at the same time
it’s often a very boring task to set all of the versions to “Publish”-state so
that they can be published. There is a shortcut available however. If you mark
a page you can press the button “Submit to publish”.
The following dialog
will then open:
Here you must first
state a comment to the publishing. This will be shown to the publisher. You can
also select if you want the system to notify the publishers. Then you select
all the pages you wish to change state on in the list or you select all by
clicking the “Select all”-button. When you are done, press the “Submit for
publishing”-button and all the marked items will be propagated to the
publisher.
If you are a publisher
on this site and usually work in the publishing tool you you can quick-publish
an edition. If you press the “Publish”-button instead of the “Submit to
publisher” the pages will be published instantly.
Since 2.4.6 there is a
“Publish this page”-button also. This is a much less heavy operation as it is
not recursive but only works on the current page and it’s associated entities.
In the structure tool
as in many other tools there are a button called “Execute task”. This is actually
a way to extend the tool with your companies own routines and interfaces tailor
made for you. The first view will therefore be a list of available tasks when
you click that button.
Hopefully you know
which task you should execute by the names they have. When you click on the one
you want to run that task will continue the wizard so the steps will differ
from task to task.
Examples of tasks
could be exporting contents, creating sub sites with a certain structure or
control all links on the site. Only the imagination is the limit to what can be
done.
As
you are often very curious to how a page looks to the user there is a preview
button.
When a user presses
that button a popup window will open and the page will be shown as it would be
presented to the user but still in the working version. This is good to get an
idea of what the changes you have made results in.
Edit Node Properties
Each site node/page
you create in the system will have to have some metadata bound to it. Things
like title, keywords and other site specific things are often needed. In
InfoGlue you always manage node properties by clicking on the node in the
navigation and then on the button “Edit Node Properties”.
You will then get a
view where you can manage the properties the administrators of your site has
defined a page should consist of. In this example there are just a few fields:
As you might notice
there is a language drop menu available. This is because properties also can be
localized. A page has probably not the same title in all languages for example.
So edit the version you are on and press save. Then change to the other
languages you wish to edit in the dropdown and do the same for them.
Page Components – building
sites/portals
This part is just a
very simple introduction to components. You should read the development guides
to components to get a better idea of what it is all about. It can be found on
the development site under http://www.infoglue.org.
Components are used to
enable a more reusable, manageable site. The users will, after some initial
education, be able to build pages with the site specific or general components
already created by the developers in an extremely dynamic way. This way the
user is restricted to the look & feel of the site but is free to compose
the pages as he/she will within the restrictions the site owner decides. The
hope is that developers create components that are generic enough to be used in
a lot of situations. Written correctly a component can be extremely usable and
even sellable to many customers. There are also a marketplace maintained by the
community where anyone can sell or give away their generic components. Our
belief is that reusable components will rationalize the development process
dramatically.
Since a while back
InfoGlue defaults to the component style page type when working with pages. The
old way to build sites are still supported but not recommended. Because of this
the normal case is that when you click on a page in the structure tool the
component editor view appears directly. If you go to the page cover you can
allways switch back to the component editor by pressing the icon marked below:
If you have not picked
a page template before or a base template already you will initially get a
screen saying you don’t have any base component so you must click on the link
and select which component you wish to base the page on or you select one of
the page templates if available. For example – we use the OfficeStand2 basic
HTML in one of the tutorials.
Now you will se the
editor. We recommend you read the tutorials and watch the video on this subject
to get all the information you need.
The management tool is
found as one of the tabs in the administrative interface. This tool should
probably not be visible for all users in your organization as this tool deals
with system setting which requires more education than for example the content
tool. We will discuss how security can be set up later in this chapter.
First we will discuss
the different subparts of the management tool. The different subparts are
reached by using the management menu on the left side.
General Notes on administration
As on all other places
in the administrative tool you will have a few fields of functionality on the
interface. To be able to discuss the functionality rather than repeat how one
creates a new, delete on or many and similar stuff we will discuss this here
and use the repository entity as the example. The next chapter will be about
the concepts of repositories so don’t worry.
General flow:
Every time you handle things in the
management view you first get a list of existing things. This is to give you a
good overview of the status right now. In the list below there are two areas to
note especially and they are marked in red.
The toolbar above each
list is used for affecting the list somehow. There is always a New-button and a
Delete-button. The new button brings out a create dialog and the delete button
deletes the items marked in the list. If you enter an item in the list it will
show a different interface which lets you edit all parameters available to edit
on the item and the toolbar will also give you a number of options depending on
the item. Also worth noting is that sometimes the create screen will present
fewer options than the detail screen later does and that is because the item
must be created before it for example can be connected to other items.
A new feature since
2.4.6 all list in the system are sortable on their columns – just click on the
column you wish to sort on and click again on the same column if you want
reverse order.
Later in this tutorial
we will assume you know these basic flows.
One of the most
central concepts of InfoGlue is “Repositories”. It is most often similar with a
website but it can be other things as well. The term repository was picked to
illustrate that it is a collection of information. It can be a website and its
information but it can for example also be an image bank or an internal place
to store document. In this chapter we will however discuss it in the terms of
website repositories.
If you click on the
menu option “Repositories” you will get a list with the repositories you have
registered in your system so far. It may look something like this:
The list will show the
existing repositories and a description for each including which URL it shall
respond on when using NiceURI:s.
Importing a repository
A very handy feature
introduced in 1.3 is the ability to import an entire repository from another
infoglue installation. This means you can transfer all content, structure and
relations on a site by importing a simple xml-file previously exported from an
infoglue system.
NOTE: This feature is not to be
regarded as a backup feature as it’s only suitable to use for transferring
development, non published versions of sites.
To begin importing a
repository just press the “Import repository”-button on top of the repository
listing. The dialog will ask for a file to import:
Browse your hard drive
and point out the xml-file that contains the repository you want to import and
press “Save”. The resulting dialog just informs you about the success:
Now press the
repository-menu item again and verify that the imported repository is listed
among them.
Repository details
A repository is mainly
a definition that has to exist before you can build anything. All content and
other things that are interesting for a site must be located inside a
repository. A repository also has a detail view. Click on the repository name
and you will see the following:
In this view you can
edit a few things as well as delete or export the repository. Below is a chart
of the fields and their use.
|
Field
name |
Typical
values |
Comment |
|
Repository name |
Any name you want but short. A site name is most
often used. intranet.mycompany.com could be an example. |
This value is used for directing users to your site
and to let administrators choose which repository he/she wishes to administer
in the tools. If you name a repository mysite.com you will then be able to
reach it in the deliver by a URL looking something like
http://localhost:8080/infoglueDeliverWorking/ViewPage.action?repositoryName=mysite.com. |
|
Description |
State what the repository
is for. Can be any describing text. |
|
|
DNS Name |
Whatever domain you want
the repository to answer to when using NiceURI. There is more information in
the administrative manual. |
Below these fields in
the repository detail view you can also state which languages you wish to exist
on the repository. We will discuss languages later but for now it’s important
to understand that a repository can contain one or many languages. The
languages chosen here will affect the content tool and the dialogs in it for
example.
You can add languages
or subtract to a site at any time so a repository can for example start off
with just supporting an English version and then after a while add support for
German or French if needed without having to develop anything new.
Exporting a
repository
A very handy feature
introduced in 1.3 is the ability to export an entire repository. This means you
can export all content, structure and relations on a site to a simple xml-file.
This file can then either be used as backup or for transferring repositories
between infoglue installations.
The only step needed
when exporting a repository is to click on the “Export repository”-button and
press the “Save”-button when the following dialog shows:
The result will be the
following:
You can now
right-click on the link and “Save link as” or whatever your browser let’s you
do thereby saving it locally on your hard drive or other media.
Warning: Users should know that there are restrictions
to this feature which means extensive testing always should be done after a
transfer or the repository to verify that the site works as before:
- It will not follow references outside the
repository in question which means reused content from other repositories
will not get exported.
- System settings are sometimes tricky to
export and users and roles including access rights are not included.
- Languages and content types etc are remapped
to the new system if the names are identical – otherwise the originals are
recreated on the new system.
- This
feature is not to be regarded as a backup feature as it’s only suitable to
use for transferring development, non published versions of sites.
Repository
properties
A new feature
introduced since 1.3 is the ability to have properties on almost anything
through the integration of OS PropertySet. This feature is used under the
button “Edit Properties” to allow users to customize the WYSIWYG on site-level
as well as to set up other aspect of how the repository relate to other
repositories.
When editing the
Repository properties you get the following interface:
The fields in this
view are:
- WYSIWYG Configuration and Styles
Configuration: You just paste the settings for the WYSIWYG right in. Read
the chapter about WYSIWYG-configuration for more information on this
topic. The same settings can be done on role and user props.
- Default folder content type: this of
course sets what content type should be pre selected when creating a
folder. Folders are also normal contents but it’s usual to have a special
content type or none at all for them as they are seldom used in the
presentation.
- Default repository for component dialog:
Set the repository you wish the component dialog should default to when
binding in a new component. If not set the repository the user is working
in is shown but often one stores the components in a separate repository
for reuse and management sake and then it’s nice to avoid switching to it
all the time.
- Parent repository (if any): This property
lets the user set which repository is the parent to this repository. Can
be used in situations where you have local divisions etc which all are sub
sites to the global site. If a site has a parent repository this means
that properties etc can be inherited from that site.
Access rights on a repository
In InfoGlue 2.0 we
have restructured the interfaces a bit. Gone is the old drop in management
where you choose site and then access rights or permissions on it. Now you
instead click on the “Access Rights”-button on the repository detail screen.
The screen will the
show the common access rights view:
The new thing in
InfoGlue 2.0 is that now there is not only a Read-right which controls what
roles are allowed to access this repository in the tools but also a
ReadForBinding-right which lets you decide what roles are allowed to reuse
content and pages through bindings from your site in other sites. This is
convenient when you do not want users to see and be able to modify for example
a “General Image”-repository but you still want them to be able to use the
images in it from their pages.
Another new feature in
InfoGlue 2.0 is that you can mix roles and groups in the access rights. To
allow access to something you must always still use role but now you can also
state that the users not only has to be part of that role but also part of a
special group. This is done by clicking the 
icon.
This will be colored if groups have been selected before and it will only show
if a role in that column have been selected and saved.
Languages on a repository
In InfoGlue 2.0 we
have restructured the interfaces a bit. Gone is the old drop in management
where you choose site and then languages on it. Now you instead click on the
“Repository Languages”-button on the repository detail screen.
The screen will the
show this view:
The new thing in
InfoGlue 2.0 is that now you can order languages within a site so not the first
system language has to be the master language. The important thing to
understand is that the first language in the list here is the language that the
site will fallback to if the asked for language does not exist. This is of
course if you use language fallback in your templates.
The languages listed
are those defined in the management à
languages area and you tick the ones you want on your site (can be done in the
repository detail screen already). To change order you just use the up / down
arrows. The other options on this page is not yet used.
Warning: Remember to not change master language after you have started building
you pages as the page-definitions are always stored in the master language
version on a site. That will render you pages empty.
System Users
A system user is a
person who will be available to the system for access control, rights
management or extranet handling among other things. The list of users will not
always come from InfoGlue but can also come from an LDAP directory, an external
user db or from another custom source. The different possibilities here is
described more in the administrative manual. The different sources of users are
supplied by adaptors which, although will look the same in the infoglue view,
will allow different possibilities when it comes to editing, creation and
deletion of users but this part will describe the use of the default InfoGlue
user database.
If you look at the
list of default users it looks like this:
Important: The user anonymous must be available if you
want to be able to protect content and pages internally in the tools but still
want anyone to look at them on the public sites. All users not logged in
through the extranet feature automatically get logged in as anonymous. Be sure
not to change anything on this user.
As you see there are
default a search option available to you above the list. This is of course due
to the fact that there can be a very large number of users available. The
search fields are hopefully pretty self explanatory except for the roles
filter. You can by selecting one or more roles select only users having those
roles. The interface does not automatically reload after input so to search you
enter the info you want to search on and press the “Search”-button.
In the button menu
there is a possibility to show/hide the search options. Just click the same
button (“Show filter” / “Hide filter”) to toggle it.
Now if we enter the
user we will see what attributes a system user has. The detail screen will show
an interface like this:
Here you can set the
following parameters:
|
Field
name |
Typical
values |
Comment |
|
Firstname |
John or whatever the persons first name is |
This value is for presentation only. |
|
Lastname |
Doe or whatever the person’s last name is. |
This value is for presentation only. |
|
Username |
6-12 characters in length. |
This will be the login name for the user. Choose
with care as this cannot be changed later. |
|
Password |
6-12 characters in length. |
This will be the login password for the user. Choose
with care. If you wish to change it later you press the link next to it and a
new one is generated and sent to the Email stated. |
|
Email |
This email address will be used by the system to
notify the user of different things so make sure it’s correct. |
Below the attributes
comes two boxes where you can state which roles/groups the user shall be part
of. In InfoGlue all access control is based on roles and optional on group
which mean this setting is very important. If you set that a user is part of a
very privileged role he/she will be able to change very much in the system. As
a note - a user must belong to the cmsUser role in order to access the tools at
all. The distinction is because you will perhaps also want to have extranet
users further on and you certainly don’t want all of those have tool access but
they will probably belong to the extranet role and only that.
Change password
If
you don’t have the old password and don’t know how to get hold of an
administrator who can dig it up you can always use the old “Send me a new
password”-link which will generate a new password for this user and email it to
him/her. InfoGlue 2.0 also comes with a new feature for changing a user
password when you know the old one. Just click on the new button “Change Password”.
In the next screen you
have to supply the old password as well as the new password.
InfoGlue has a feature
which let’s you set properties on a user. This is of course to allow saving
extra information on a user that is not available in an LDAP or any other
system and perhaps is only of interest to InfoGlue or the sites InfoGlue
manages. What properties the user has is decided by which content type you
choose for him/her in this screen. Just choose a content type in the drop box
and save. The content types listed are of User Properties type. Default no such
content types ships with the installation so you have to create one yourself in
the content type definition tool if you need it. When the user has a content
type assigned for the properties you will see a new button at the top called
“Edit User Properties”.
If you press this you
will get a form for entering the attributes much like the form in the content
tool.
This new feature is
very handy for personalizing the system and websites. Now you can set your user
data here and use it when generating the sites. Some people might not want to
see red cars – that’s a preference you state or at least store here. The actual
choice is often made by the user himself but you’ll need a place to persist it.
Roles
As stated under system
users we use roles with an optional group in InfoGlue to control access. This
is true for tool users as well as for extranet/intranet users. In 1.2 the
extranet users and roles were separated from the internal ones but since 1.3
this changed to make administration easier and more consistent.
A small company will
probably have at least 2-4 roles in the system depending on how they want to
divide the responsibility and access between their staff. Often there are many,
many more roles especially if extranet functionality is to be used.
The roles listing
looks like this:
Important: The role anonymous must be available if you
want to be able to protect content and pages internally in the tools but still
want anyone to look at them on the public sites. All users not logged in
through the extranet feature automatically get logged in as user anonymous and
has the role anonymous. Be sure not to change anything on this role.
Important: The role cmsUser must be available and all
users who should be able to access the tools should be part of this role. Be
sure not to change anything on this role. Make sure not to add external users
to this role as this means they can access the tools if you have not infrastructural
barriers as well to that environment.
It’s a very simple
list just like the users were and if we enter the details by clicking the role
name we get the following screen:
Basically we just set
the attributes in the table below and we are also able to set which system
users is part of this role.
|
Field
name |
Typical
values |
Comment |
|
Role name |
Webmaster or whatever the role should be. |
This value is for presentation only. |
|
Description |
Anything |
This value is for presentation only. |
As with system users
you can have properties on roles. This means you can set attributes on a role
which also gives users in that role those attributes. Examples might be if you
have an extranet role called “Regulars” on a e-business site they would have a
attribute called “discount”. The same procedure for choosing content type to
base which attributes a role should have applies here as for system users
except that content types that are to be listed in the drop must be of type
Role properties type.
You will see a new button called “Edit Role Properties” when you have
selected a content type and the interface there will allow you to enter
information in the same way you do when editing content.
As stated under system
users we use groups as an option when assigning access rights. Groups are new
to InfoGlue 2.0 and can also be used for other things. Most often it reflects
your organizational belonging as a contrast to roles which describes different
roles you step into when doing things. For example – there may be an webmaster
in each department but they should not be able to master each others sites so
then the group “department” may be used to limit further what they can do on
what repository. This is true for tool users as well as for extranet/intranet
users.
A small company may
not have a need for groups but a larger corporation will and how many will
depend on how they want to divide the responsibility and access between their
staff.
The groups listing
looks like this:
It’s a very simple
list just like the users were and if we enter the details by clicking the group
name we get the following screen:
Basically we just set
the attributes in the table below and we are also able to set which system
users is part of this group.
|
Field
name |
Typical
values |
Comment |
|
Group name |
Marketing or whatever the role should be. |
This value is for presentation only. |
|
Description |
Anything |
This value is for presentation only. |
As with system users
you can have properties on groups. This means you can set attributes on a group
which also gives users in that group those attributes. Examples might be if you
have an internal group called “Subsidiary X” on an intranet site they could
have an attribute called “Organizational number”. The same procedure for
choosing content type to base which attributes a group should have applies here
as for system users except that content types that are to be listed in the drop
must be of type Group properties type.
You will see a new button called “Edit Group Properties” when you have
selected a content type and the interface there will allow you to enter
information in the same way you do when editing content.
InfoGlue has multi
language support. It supports virtually all Unicode languages and used UTF-8 in
all parts of the system. A new language can easily be added during runtime by
using the management tool the way we will describe here.
The main view will
list the languages currently available to the system. It is regardless of which
repository and so on. It looks something like this:
Basically the language
has a name, a language code (ISO) and a charset used for encoding.
To create a language
you press “New Language”-button as usual and get the following fields to edit:
|
Field
name |
Typical
values |
Comment |
|
Language name |
The language name which will be shown in the content
tool. Use a natural name. |
This value is for presentation only. |
|
Language Code |
Should be the language code found for the language
in http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/ert/iso639.htm |
This value is for site logic mainly. |
|
Character set |
ISO-8859-1, UTF-8 etc |
Set this value to specify which encoding we should
use when sending information to the user. Very important for non-western
languages. We usually use iso-8859-1 for all western languages and UTF-8 if
we wish to support anything else. One can use UTF-8 always if you don’t have
to support old browsers or special devices. |
After filling in the
information press Save and it will be available in the system. To be available
on a particular site you have to go back to the repository view and tick the
new language as available on the repositories it should be available on. Please
look at the section about repositories for more information.
As for many other
things in InfoGlue Management tool this is mostly a part of the system aimed at
the administrator but we still want to say a few words about this feature.
Interception points
are what replaced “Functions” from 1.2. An interception point is a point in the
system where we have added a possibility for custom logic to intercept the
processing and extend InfoGlue’s own logic.
We use this feature
for many things and we think it will be used even more by the customers
themselves later on. The most obvious example of how we use the feature is how
the entire authorization system uses it to intercept actions made by the user
in the system and checks if the user is allowed to do what he/she tries to do.
If not - the authorizer puts in a veto and stops the action.
The interfaces in the
management tool are very simple. The first one which meets you when you clicked
on the InterceptionPoint-link is:
By default when a new
system has been installed this list will contain all interception points
incorporated in the core. Of course you can add new ones for your own code but
you are not able to add more system points unless you compile the system
yourself.
The detail view looks
like this:
The fields available
for editing are:
|
Field
name |
Typical
values |
Comment |
|
Category |
ManagementTool, Content etc |
The category is used when showing different views,
especially when grouping the interception points when assigning access
rights. |
|
Name |
ManagementTool.Read, Content.Read |
This is what the code use as a reference when an
interception point is reached. |
|
Description |
Free text |
Just description of the interception point |
|
Uses extra data for access control |
No / Yes |
If yes the system knows that the access right-dialog
must be initiated from a point in the tools which identifies an entity more
in detail. If no there will be an “Access Rights”-button in this interface.
This means that things like which users has access to the content tool,
management tool etc should be configured from the respective Interception
point but things like content access which is different for each content must
be configured from it’s view. |
As you see there is a
list(only one item now) below of interceptors. This is a way which makes it
possible to attach any number of interceptors to an interception point very
much like a listener. If you don’t want any access rights checked for example
you can just uncheck the “InfoGlue Common Access Rights Interceptor” for that
interception point. Not recommended but possible.
As you must have
understood from the previous section interceptors are very powerful. They can
attach themselves to all interception points defined and intercept the actions
there. Sometimes they may do nothing but you can write any code you want there really.
The listing looks like
this:
Not much there and the
detail view looks like this:
|
Field
name |
Typical
values |
Comment |
|
Name |
Anything |
Just a name for the interceptor |
|
Description |
Free text |
Just description of the interception point |
|
Interceptor Class Name |
Com.mycomp.myclass |
This is the fully qualified class name that the
system will use to lookup the logic. The class must be in the class path of
InfoGlue CMS. |
Below is the list of
interception points – just click them ones you want this interceptor to
intercept.
Service Definitions
The concept of service
definitions are that the service defined will be able to deliver some sort of
information through a binding for example. This is to separate the platform
from the data sources in a generic way. We use the same concept to fetch
information from InfoGlue which is why two default services are defined, one
for content and one for structure.
We will not describe
more of this functionality here as extending this part is described in the
developer documentation in detail. The functionality is a great feature when it
comes to integrating more data-sources.
The available service
binding concept is worth to mention although it is more defined in the
developer documentation. In 1.3 and forward this feature is not used as much as
people are now using components instead with the bindings they have but this is
a similar feature on page level. The idea is to define which bindings are
available globally to a page in the system. A binding is a possibility to
integrate some sort of information from some sort of data source. The data
source is connected by assigning a service definition. Each available service
binding also has an interface which is what presents the user with a binding
view. The interface is defined by an action.
The interface for
creating new bindings is as follows:
When the available
service binding is defined you must also go into the “Site Node Type
Definition” menu and assign the new binding to the right types. When assigned
to a page type all pages based on that type will have that binding available.
As we do not encourage
people to use this feature very any more this section is very low on
information. If needed - more information can be sought in the developer lists.
Site Node Type Definitions
The concept of a Site
Node Type Definition is very important for developers to grasp it they wish to
extend the platform in a fundamental way. It is described more in the developer
documentation but the basic idea is that a page type can be much customized. A
developer can implement his very own invoker which can be anything. It does not
even have to deliver a webpage if that is the desired behavior. Examples of
invokers might be A WAP-visualizer, a redirect node, a print-page or something
very different.
The interface looks
like this for a chosen item:
The field Invoker
Class Name is what let’s the user define his own class. If not defined, the
usual HTML-renderer is used. Below the input fields is the list of what
bindings should be available on this node type. Mark those you wish to make
available on pages of that type. Which bindings you need depends a lot on what
templates you want to use.
Categories and
categorization is a new feature in InfoGlue 2.0. What it is really is a system
to set up custom category definitions in a tree-like structure so you can have
different sections and then you have the possibility to set which categories a
certain content fit into.
The categorization
itself is described under the content tool chapter above. When it comes to
setting up categories there are a few steps involved. Start by choosing
“Categories” in the management menu. The first interface looks like this:
To add a category you
press the “New Category”-button. The form will look like this:
Set the Category Name
to a suitable one and add a description. Press the “Save”-button to complete
the creation. In this case I just created a base category for all locations I’m
meaning to set up for articles. In my example I want all articles to be
categorized according to which parts of the world they are about and also what
kind of article it is. Therefore I continue to create another root category
next to location which I call “Type”.
Now I go into each one
of these and add subcategories. Just click on the name and press “New Category”
on the following screen. I will add “
Now the categories are
set up but you must also state which categories should be available to which
content types. This will be described in the section about content types below.
Content Type Definitions
Content types are a
very central part of InfoGlue. The concept is that you after an information
analysis define the information types needed for the site as content types. A
content type consists of a name and the attributes it contains. Each attribute
can be of different data type and often maps to some sort of data structure.
As we stated before a
content type is a definition of an information requirement on the site. Because
of this all contents are based on a content type and the content type is also
used as the interface description for the input interface for the editor. This
means the content editing view is dynamically generated based on the content
type definition which saves a lot of development work.
The interface looks
like this (the list is most often unique to each customer):
The list view is not
very interesting but the detail view looks like this:
As you see the Article
content type in this example has a list of attributes. The attributes has a
type which can be one of a few predefined. It also has an order and can be
moved up or down in the list.
To add a new attribute
you choose the type in the list as below and press “Insert Form Element”.
The new field will
have gotten a few defaults to it and you should now change the field’s
properties at once as well as change it’s ordering if needed.
Categories:
On a content type
definition you can choose to allow content editors to categorize contents based
on that content type. To allow categorization you have to add one or more category
to the content type definition. You do this by pressing the “Add Category”-link
and then clicking on the properties on that property-icon. The view looks like
this:
You set the category
key (used in searches later by developers). The title is what the user sees
when categorizing and you also add which base category should be used. The
logic is that all categories below the selected base category will be available
to the user.
Continued from the
part about Categories I will make it possible to categorize on region.
Asset Keys:
There is also a way to
predefine the asset keys that should be available when uploading files to
contents of this content type. This helps the users choose the right key which
is important in those cases where templates are dependent on what key the user
gave the attached asset.
To add a new asset Key
just press the link and fills in the information. Existing keys can be edited
by clicking on the existing key.
If you click on the
property icon on an attribute you will also see this:
In this view you state
the name of the attribute which is how you later reach those attributes from
templates. You also define the type and some descriptions and css-classes. In
this case this type also has properties controlling the width and height of the
field as well as which editors should be available in the edit view. There is
also a possibility to set what text should be default when it’s empty and the
user enters the form.
InfoGlue 2.0 lets you
define the XML OSWorkflow interpreters and runs. Click on the “Workflows”-link
in management tool and you will see the list of available workflow definitions.
The interface for
creating new one or editing one is as follows:
So you simply paste in
the xml that makes out the OSWorkflow workflow definition and it’s then
available in the MyDesktop view.
Portlets
InfoGlue 2.0 supports
Portlets conforming to the JSR 168 standard. There is also a simple deployment
handling incorporated. If you click on the “Portlets”-link in management tool
you will get a list of existing portlets.
Currently InfoGlue
does not support editing of existing portlets or deletion of portlets but that
is in the making for the next release. The interface for deploying a new one
looks like this however and you reach it by pressing the “New Portlet”-button:
Here you state the
context name you want for the portlet and then point the browser to the
war-file containing the portlet. When you press “Save” InfoGlue will try to
upload the portlet and distribute it (on tomcat) to the deliver applications.
Make sure you read more on portlets in other documentation and FAQ:s as it’s a
tricky area.
Redirects
InfoGlue has the
possibility to redirect requests. This is convinient when moving old sites into
the new setup or if you wish to make shortcuts to pages deep down in the
structure.
The listing view looks
like this and only states the address to trigger on (can be regexp) and the
destination address.
The detail screen only
has those two fields also.
There are a few more
tools in the management tool but those are described in details in the
administrative manual. Those are:
Application settings – lets an admin set up all application
settings without messing with property files.
Message center – let's a admin communicate with the logged on
users by chat and email.
Diagnostics and status – contains some links to status pages
System tools – contains some admin tools like archiving,
validation etc.
Publication process in InfoGlue
This chapter will
discuss how InfoGlue works when it comes to publishing. It will be a guide to
use for both editors and for publishers as the two areas will involved.
In InfoGlue there are
two different things which can be published – content versions and site node
versions. To publish a site both site nodes and contents must be published –
otherwise the site will not be what you want it to be probably.
The publication
process is initiated when a user have decided that he/she are satisfied with
the work on a modified content version or a page and wishes to publish it to
the external users. As always the working copy can be viewed in the
working-version of the site so he/she can confirm it looks nice there.
When he/she thinks the
version is mature he/she changes the state of the version to “Publish”. The
state option is located on the upper left side of the version header.
What the action of setting
a version to publish should be interpreted as is a suggestion/plea to the
publisher to publish the new version. What really happens is that there will be
a task created which the publisher should respond to either by publishing it or
to refuse it.
There will be a dialog
when you change to publish state. It is there to allow the user to specify what
he has done so the editor can understand it better.
As you can see above
the user sending the content for publishing also can choose if he/she should be
set as the last modifier (overriding the last person editing the texts) and one
can also choose to have InfoGlue send a mail to concerned publishers so they
know there are items up for publishing.
The same applies to site nodes as we already said. On each node there is a
similar state which can be set.