[opencms-dev] Editor access prolem and pea for basic tutorials...

[M Butcher]

Dave,

On Wed, 2003-08-27 at 10:52, David Booker wrote:
> As a new user, I'm baffled by some "gaps": 
> 1.DOCUMENTATION: All my quesitons seem naive, because I can't find instructions for many "features" in the OpenCMS pdf-documentation or tutorials or documentation modules or help. Am I missing the "mother lode" of documentation someplace? Is there actually a tutorial someplace that ACTUALLY walks one through all the steps to put a site into OpenCMS, create the navigation (w/o java knowledge), assign projects and permissions and set the static export and adjust the URL, etc.....? The basic and module-based documentation doesn't.

I suppose that if you can't find the documentation in the help,
tutorials or PDF doc, this list is the best place to go. I think that an
assumption made by the OpenCMS documentation is that the person(s) doing
the development will be fairly comfortable with Java -- or at least
simple JSP. 

In direct answer to your questions:
1) Navigation will require some JSP programming. You may choose to go
through the tutorials on JSP development, or you may want to look at the
examples at http://synyx.de/board/

2) Assigning projects and permissions is mainly covered in the PDF
documentation and the help sections. If you have specific questions,
feel free to ask here.

3) Static export and URL rewriting is, I'm afraid, documented mainly in
the $TOMCAT/webapps/opencms/WEB-INF/config/opencms.props file. You'll
have to read the comment sections in there and determine what you need
to do. Again, if you have specific questions, please post here.

>  
> 2.HELP MODULE: The "context sensitive" help module is NOT. It's just a pared-down version of the basic manual section of the pdf documentation that accompanies the source distribution. Am I missing something? Is there actually a way to turn on a context-sensitive help?
> 

It is (at least in my install) context sensitive most of the time. Some
tasks are not documented, it seems, but most are.

> 3. ACCESS DENIED: Installed OpenCMS 5.0 on Tomcat on Unix. Simple tests of permissions, "right out of the box", defined some sample people's logins/roles....ok.....tried to edit a test document -- no problem for the Administrator, but access denied for Users and Projectmanagers. Permissions on folder and file set properly, roles appear correct.....What else can cause it? They can intermittently lock/unlock, but sometimes get denied. Can permissions be affected by the Unix machine's own permissions on which Tomcat is running? 
> 

Every once in a while, I've seen that happen on a file. Publishing the
file fixed it. The things that affect the file's permissions are: 1) the
project (e.g. can't edit "online" and some projects have custom
permissions), 2) The permissions of the immediate file, and 3) the
permissions of the parent directory(s). Oh, and 4) the 'lock' state, of
course. The database does not check other (UNIX) permissions.

> Tried giving the user a "task" but that did nothing, in fact didn't even send the message it was supposed to.

Make sure that the <smtpserver/> element in
$TOMCAT/webapps/opencms/WEB-INF/config/registry.xml is set correctly

> 
> Tried publishing the folder....no change. Tried deleting the folder...not an option. Only deletes in the offline project, but stays on the Online project. Can't get rid of the thing!

You must 'publish' deleted offline stuff before it is deleted online.
When you think about it, it makes sense -- you want to make all of the
appropriate adjustments to the offline project and publish it all before
just deleting files from online. This gives you a chance to, say, remove
pertinent links.

> 
> Ok, brownie points to anyone with ideas.....
> 

I'd prefer just brownies. :)

Seriously, I hope that helps a bit. CMSes in general, and OpenCMS in
particular, are pretty frustrating to pick up, since content management
is such a difficult task, and every single product has a different way
of doing it.

Matt


-- 
M Butcher <mbutcher at grcomputing.net>