Content Mirroring Configuration

Transcription

1 Content Mirroring Configuration Product version: 4.50 Document version: 1.0 Document creation date: Purpose This document describes how to configure mirroring in EPiServer and contains information on how to set up a news channel from an intranet site to an extranet site. The contents of this document are protected by copyright. Contents of the document may be freely copied and distributed, either digitally or in printed format, to all EPiServer users. EPiServer is a registered trademark of ElektroPost Stockholm AB. Other product and company names mentioned in this document may be the trademarks for their respective owners.

2 2 Content Mirroring Configuration Table of Contents INTRODUCTION 2 SET UP AN EPISERVER-TO-EPISERVER NEWS CHANNEL WITH FILTER 3 TROUBLESHOOTING 5 Introduction Channel In EPiServer, the information defining the content that should be mirrored from the Web site is defined in channels. You can have multiple channels defined in one EPiServer site. Each channel contains properties that define the pages that should be included in a channel. A channel does not know or care about where the pages are being delivered, it only makes sure the underlying publisher receives information about the changes according to the channel properties. It is important to understand that the channel mirrors what it can see, not the actual pages. This means that access rights, filters, publish dates, etc. can be used to obtain a customized view of data. One of the major properties of a channel is the channel type. There are three types of channel to choose from: Tree - The tree model finds all changes made to a tree (move, delete, update, create). All these changes will be sent to all destinations. The tree model always finds differences by starting at the root page and recursing the tree. This means that a sub-page will never be included if the parent is not included. If you exclude a page (by using a filter), all sub-pages will also be excluded. This type is primarily used to be able to mirror a tree structure where the target will be a replica tree structure of the source. List - The list model works exactly the same way as a tree model with the difference that it won t recurse after the first level. Search - The search model will only find changed (or "marked as changed") or new pages. Delete and move operations are not intercepted. This model is specifically designed to be able to mirror pages regardless of location to a single destination/list. This is useful for scenarios when news should be exported to another system (news service or another global news list in another EPiServer system). New or modified content can be released either manually or automatically. This is defined in the channel properties. Content is manually released by the editor from EPiServer's Action window. The Mirroring service in Admin mode can be used to set up a scheduled job, so that content is automatically mirrored at, for example, a set time every day or week. When changes are approved they are handled over to destinations as defined on the channel, these changes are queued in the database on each and every destination. Destination: HTML The pages will mirror HTML files by sending a Web request to the page's URL. This request downloads the content and stores it as HTML files in the local file system on the server. A tree structure will in this way be mirrored to a tree structure in the file system, where a page becomes a

3 Set Up an EPiServer-to-EPiServer News Channel with Filter 3 folder. The function will also search all HTML that is downloaded, and search for references to images, links and style sheets. Links must be relative to the site for this to work; otherwise the links will be left untouched. Mirroring to HTML takes longer than the other types of mirroring, as the Web server must be contacted for each page and the content downloaded. As changes to a single page can affect a large amount of pages, e.g. menus, there is a setting that controls that each update fetches all pages all over again and checks whether they are affected by the change. Destination: XML XML mirroring works in a similar way to HTML mirroring in that each page will mirror a file on the local file system. The only difference is that instead of downloading HTML from the page, the properties will be extracted and formatted to an XML file via an XML style sheet (XSLT). Destination: EPiServer EPiServer mirroring can be summarized as an automated export/import between two Web sites. When the content is changed, it is packaged into an export package in EPiServer and sent via a Web service to the other Web site, where it is unpacked and imported into the system. There are, however, several differences between EPiServer's standard export/import in Admin mode. The first difference is that the receiver remembers which pages have been received for a certain channel and will make sure that the next time the same page is received, it will be updated instead of being re-created. A second difference is that files and images will not be packaged and sent inside the export package. They are sent separately before the actual export package is sent. Microsoft Web Service Extensions (WSE), which supports DIME, makes it more efficient to send binary files. Set Up an EPiServer-to-EPiServer News Channel with Filter This chapter describes how to set up a news channel from an intranet site to an extranet site. (The names intranet and extranet can, of course, be replaced with something that suits your environment. Requirements The following is required to be able to set up a news channel from an intranet site to an extranet site. Both sites must run EPiServer 4.50 or later. Both sites must have page types with the same name, in this case News page. Both page types should share at least MainBody so that there is a property to display externally. Settings on Extranet Site Follow the instructions below to set up the extranet site. 1. Open web.config and add the following configuration: <location path="webservices/pagemirroringservice.asmx"> <system.web> <webservices> <soapextensiontypes>

4 4 Content Mirroring Configuration <add type="microsoft.web.services2.webservicesextension, Microsoft.Web.Services2, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" priority="1" group="0" /> </soapextensiontypes> </webservices> </system.web> </location> 2. This step only applies if your extranet site is using Forms authentication. In web.config, uncomment the BasicAuthentication http module. This will translate incoming Basic Authentication requests to forms authentication: <add name="basicauthentication" type="episerver.security.basicauthentication, EPiServer" /> 3. Open Internet Information Services. Navigate to your Web site and make sure that the WebServices folder has only Basic Authentication enabled by right-clicking the folder and selecting Properties and the Directory Security tab. 4. Open a browser and go to Admin mode on the intranet site. Select Remote Web Sites from the Config tab. Note the name of this site visible after Local site name. If it says unknown, change it to, for example intranet. 5. Go to Admin mode in the extranet site. Select Remote Web Sites from the Config tab. Add a site with the name of your intranet, for example internet, and click Create next to the Shared secret for signature field. Copy the resulting secret value to your local computer. You will need it during configuration of the intranet site. Click Save. Settings on Intranet Site Follow the instructions below to set up the intranet site. 1. Open a browser and go to Admin mode on the intranet site. Select Remote Web Sites from the Config tab. Add a site with the name extranet and paste the secret value that you created in the previous step when configuring the extranet site. Enter the URL to the external site, for example Enter a username, for example extranetserver\episerveradmin and a password. Click Save. Note By default the user needs to be a Windows administrator on the server that runs the extranet site. For better and more finegrained security, please see the Web Services technical note, which describes this configuration in more detail. 2. Find the News page page type and add a new property with name PublishToExtranet of type selected/not selected. 3. Select Mirroring Administration from the Config tab and create a new mirror. Enter a name and select News list as start page (Inspiration/News in the sample package). Set Mirror type to Search. Switch to the Property Filter tab and enter PublishToExtranet as property name and True as property value. Leave the other options on their default values and save your changes. 4. Click Create Destination and select type EPiServer. Select extranet as remote web site and enter the ID number of the news list page on the destination as root page (the Inspiration/News page on your extranet site). Leave the other options as default and save your changes.

5 Troubleshooting 5 Testing Operations 1. Create a new news page under your News list node and make sure that you select the recently created PublishToExtranet property. 2. Open the Action window in Edit mode and select Approve mirroring updates. Your newly created page should show up. Select Publish at the bottom of the list. 3. Go to Admin mode and select Mirroring Service from the Admin tab. Click Start Manually. If your job executed as expected, you should select an interval for this job to run for future mirroring operations, for example every 15 minutes. Troubleshooting Error: Server found request content type to be 'application/dime', but expected 'text/xml' Make sure that you added the Web service extension in web.config on the destination server as described in the instructions above. Error: Object moved to here / Access denied Make sure that the Web Service user has access to log on to the server. For more troubleshooting and configuration options, please refer to the Web Services technical note.