[opencms-dev] Projects vs sites & rights management

Chirouze Olivier olivier.chirouze at volvo.com
Thu Apr 17 16:01:42 CEST 2008


Hi Claus.

Thanks a lot for your reply, it was very valuable.
I think I will stick to multiple sites with ACL for each corresponding
directory, it should be enough for what we need.

I might have another look  at projects later on.

That's good to see there is such an active feedback on OpenCms!

Olivier

> -----Original Message-----
> From: opencms-dev-bounces at opencms.org 
> [mailto:opencms-dev-bounces at opencms.org] On Behalf Of Claus Priisholm
> Sent: 16 April 2008 09:54
> To: The OpenCms mailing list
> Subject: Re: [opencms-dev] Projects vs sites & rights management
> 
> Think of projects as a way to keep multiple editors from stepping on 
> each others toes when it comes to publishing.
> 
> If you have say the Offline and a NewSection project, you can 
> do the day 
> to day changes (changing typos and what have you) "inside" 
> the Offline 
> project. At the same time you could be building a new section 
> for your 
> homepage "inside" the NewSection project.
> Since the latter is likely to go on for a longer period of time you 
> would like to make sure that nothing from this part of the 
> homepage gets 
> published before it is all finished and ready for publishing. 
> By keeping 
> the changes inside a specific offline-project you can do that.
> 
> If you choose to publish the Offline project only changes inside that 
> project is published whereas the changes inside the 
> NewSection project 
> is not published.
> 
> Now the question is why use project publishing in the first place 
> instead of just direct publishing?
> 
> In v.7 this is mostly a question of convenience as the new content 
> relation engine makes it easier to ensure that related contents is 
> published as well when you do a direct publish.
> In previous versions you would not be prompted if related 
> contents was 
> not yet published, possible leading to dead links in the 
> Online version. 
> Back then the best way to ensure this did not happen was by using the 
> project publish which would then publish all changes in one go.
> 
> I still find projects a convenient way to deal with parallel "work in 
> progress" scenarios, but if you need detailed control over who can 
> publish what, you may find that allowing users to do project 
> publishing 
> makes this difficult (since the direct publish ACL setting is 
> ignored by 
> project publish).
> 
> Also there are couple of things to keep in mind:
> 
> Projects are not some kind of version control system, there 
> are only one 
> copy of the resource and it "belongs to" the project in which it was 
> last changed (i.e. if you create a resource in the NewSection 
> project, 
> and then later - while in the Offline project - locks it, the 
> resource 
> is then considered to belong to the Offline project).
> 
> The second thing to notice, is that it is not a replacement 
> for setting 
> the access permissions on the resources. You can assign folders to a 
> project and as an effect ensuring that - once "inside" the 
> project - the 
> user cannot edit contents outside the project. But since using a 
> different project (such as Offline) would circumvent that 
> security, it 
> is much safer to assign the necessary permission to the appropriate 
> folders and so forth as these will always be enforced, no matter what 
> project you're inside.
> 
> /Claus
> 
> Chirouze Olivier wrote:
> > Hi Michael and thanks again for your answer.
> > 
> > The concept of "sites" is quite well explained indeed. (I 
> was able to
> > add sites, affect them to some groups, set a default site, etc).
> > 
> > I do see what "offline" and "online" mean, but I can't 
> really understand
> > in which case you would create sub-projects and what they 
> are aimed for.
> > 
> > Could someone explain or point to some documentation module 
> about new
> > projects?
> > 
> > Thanks
> > 
> > Olivier 
> > 
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: opencms-dev-bounces at opencms.org 
> >> [mailto:opencms-dev-bounces at opencms.org] On Behalf Of 
> Michael Emmerich
> >> Sent: 14 April 2008 16:18
> >> To: The OpenCms mailing list
> >> Subject: Re: [opencms-dev] Projects vs sites & rights management
> >>
> >> Olivier,
> >>
> >>> Hi all!
> >>>
> >>> This will be my first post to the list but I might be 
> back for more
> >>> technical questions later on ;-)
> >>>
> >>> I am planning to use OpenCms for the following need:
> >>> - only managing "pure static content" (will be used more as 
> >> a document
> >>> managing system: html, pdfs, images)
> >>> - group of users will need to manage one or many "sites".
> >>> - I would like to allow these users to have rights only on 
> >> their sites
> >>> (a site manager is allowed for upload, delete, create... 
> >> And publish,
> >>> but only on his site(s)).
> >>>
> >>> I have been impressed by OpenCms user, groups, and 
> >> organizational unit
> >>> features... And I think I understand them now ;-)
> >>>
> >>> I have started to play with permissions and groups on 
> folders and I
> >>> think I will be able to manage to have some users allowed on some
> >>> directories quite easily. But as far as I understood, 
> "publish" will
> >>> always publish all subdirectories... Or maybe not with 
> subprojects?
> >>>
> >>> My question is: what exactly is a "project" and a "site" in 
> >> OpenCms? The
> >>> next question is: how would you advice me to use projects 
> >> and sites to
> >>> achieve the above goal?
> >>>
> >>> I don't really understand the concept of offline / online 
> >> project, and
> >>> /sites file tree.
> >>
> >> Online / Offline, this is easy:
> >> Normally you have an OpenCms system running on the server 
> >> that delivers 
> >> your website. Therefore, all access to the system will 
> also read the 
> >> content of the online project.
> >> When you log in the OpenCms workplace, you can switch to the 
> >> different 
> >> projects, by default you have "Online" and "Offline".
> >> To edit some content, you have to be in the "Offline" 
> >> project. You can 
> >> do your changes, check if your changes "look good" in your 
> >> templates and 
> >> so on. As long as you are doing so, the visitor of your 
> >> website will not 
> >> see your changes as you have made them to the "Offline" 
> >> project and he 
> >> is always accesing the "Online" project. Therefore you have 
> >> to publish 
> >> the content to get it online. Publishing can only be done 
> if you have 
> >> the role of a projectmanager, so you can have users which 
> are able to 
> >> edit the content and tohose to review the changes and put 
> it online.
> >>
> >>
> >> About the sites:
> >> One OpenCms installation can be used to serve multiple 
> sites. Each of 
> >> the folders in the /sites folder has the content for a single 
> >> website. 
> >> Please take a look at the documentation module about 
> >> multisite which is 
> >> part of your OpenCms installation.
> >>
> >>
> >>> Hope I was clear... I am not saying there is no clear doc on the
> >>> subject... But I didn't find it!
> >>>
> >>> Thanks in advance!
> >>>
> >>> Olivier
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> This mail is sent to you from the opencms-dev mailing list
> >>> To change your list options, or to unsubscribe from the 
> >> list, please visit
> >>> http://lists.opencms.org/mailman/listinfo/opencms-dev
> >> Kind regads,
> >> Michael Emmerich
> >>
> >> -- 
> >> Michael Emmerich
> >> Alkacon Software GmbH - The OpenCms Experts
> >>
> >>
> >> Visit OpenCms Days 2008 Conference and Expo
> >> May 5 to May 6 2008 in Cologne, Germany
> >>
> >>
> >> http://www.alkacon.com
> >> http://www.opencms.org
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >>
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
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> 
> -- 
> Claus Priisholm, CodeDroids ApS
> Phone: +45 48 22 46 46
> cpr (you know what) codedroids.com - http://www.codedroids.com
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> -- 
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> 
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