Chapter 15 Configuring Web Publishing

iPlanet Web Server clients can use Web Publisher to collaborate on projects by directly accessing, editing, and managing file on remote servers. Web Publisher provides sophisticated features for server clients, such as file management, editing and publishing, and access control.

• Using Netshare
• Setting Access Control For Web Publisher Owners
• Indexing and Updating Properties
• Changing the Web Publishing State
• Maintaining Web Publishing Data
• Unlocking Files
• Adding Custom Properties
• Managing Properties
• Customizing Your Netshare Home Page
• Customizing the Web Publisher User Interface

http://ServerID/netshare/UserID

• Setting Up the Server and Creating Netshare Home Directories
• Before You Start


• Using the Server Manager


• Accessing the Web Publisher Home Page

• Document root
• Netshare parent directory


• Template filename

• as part of creating an individual Netshare home directory through the Server Manager
• as part of creating an individual Netshare home directory through the Netshare utility


• by performing the following steps:



1. From the Administration Server, choose the Users & Groups.
2. Click Manage Users. The web server displays the Manage Users page.
3. Click Find.
4. On the page listing all matched user IDs, click the desired user ID.
5. Click Licenses.
6. Select iPlanet Web Server and click Save Changes.

allow (all) user = 'owner';

1. From the Server Manager, choose Web Publishing.
2. Click the Create Netshare link.

The web server displays the Create Netshare page.

3. Click A single user.
4. Type the user's user ID.
5. Ignore the Owner field.
6. (Optional) Enter another Netshare home directory if you do not want to accept the default of using the user ID.
7. Click the Create button.

This marks the user as licensed if not yet marked as such, creates the user's Netshare home directory, and assigns ownership of the files and folders in that directory to the user ID that was specified. If you attempt to create a home directory that already exists, you receive an error message.

1. From the Server Manager, choose Web Publishing.
2. Click the Create Netshare link.

The web server displays the Create Netshare page.

3. Click A group.
4. Enter the name of the group.
5. Enter the name of the group's owner.

This name must be a valid member of the group.

6. (Optional) Enter another Netshare home directory if you do not want to accept the default of using the group name.
7. Click the Create button.

This restarts the server because you have added a new ACL, granting special access to the members of the group. When you add a single user's Netshare, the default ACL is sufficient.

This marks the group's owner as a licensed user if not yet marked as such, creates the group's Netshare home directory, and assigns ownership of the files and folders in that directory to the owner's user ID. This also gives all users in the group read-write access permission for all files and folders in the home directory. If you attempt to create a home directory that already exists, you receive an error message.

1. From the Server Manager, choose Web Publishing.
2. Click the Create Netshare link.

The web server displays the Create Netshare page.

3. Click "All users marked as licensed."
4. Click Create.

Accessing the Web Publisher Home Page
When you have configured web publishing for your server, you and your users can access the Web Publisher home page at the following URL:

http://ServerID/publisher

allow (write, delete) user = owner;

Ownership of web publishing documents can be assigned either through the Index and Update Properties page (choose Web Publishing and click the Index and Update Properties link) or through Web Publisher. The Index and Update Properties page allows you to do a bulk assignment of ownership to a set of documents and Web Publisher performs individual assignments of file ownership to a user when the user publishes or uploads the file.

acl "uri=/publisher/";
allow (read, execute, list, info) user = anyone;
allow (write, delete) user = owner;

1. From the Server Manager, choose Web Publishing.
2. Click Index and Update Properties.

The web server displays the Index and Update Properties page.

3. Choose the path of the directory to be indexed.

The Document Directory field displays the currently selected directory. You can index documents in the primary document directory, an additional document directory, or in a subdirectory.

If you want to index a different directory, click the View button to see a list of directories. You can index any directory that is listed or you can view the subdirectories in a listed directory, and index one of those instead.

Once you click the index link for a directory, you return to the Index and Update Properties page and the directory name appears in the Document Directory field.

Note. You cannot use this function to index files that are larger than 3MB in size. You can, however, do an automatic indexing of such large files through the Property Sheet in Web Publisher (through the Web Publisher View Properties menu command) by checking "Make contents searchable".

Unix/Linux. You can index the contents of your users' files and folders that are in their default user home directories as defined by the Content Management | User Document Directories function. For example, if user document directories are active on your server and the default ~USERNAME/public_html has been defined for your server, that entry is displayed as one of the permitted document directories you can index. This indexes all user document directories that exist currently on your server according to the criteria you select in the Index and Update Properties page.

4. If you also want to index the subdirectories within the specified directory, click Include Subdirectories.
5. You can index all files in the chosen directory by leaving the default *.* pattern in the "Include files matching pattern" field or you can define your own wildcard expression to restrict indexing to documents that match that pattern. For example, you could enter *.html to only index the content in documents with the .html extension, or you could use the following pattern (complete with parentheses) to index all HTML documents:

(*.htm|*.html)

You can define multiple wildcards in an expression. See Chapter 2, "Administering iPlanet Web Servers," for details of the syntax for wildcard patterns.

6. If this is the first time you index web publishing documents, check Index unindexed documents.

In subsequent indexing operations, you can uncheck it or you may leave it checked to index any new documents that have been added to the document directory.

7. If you want to make a change to files that have already been indexed, you can use the Update previously indexed documents option to do a bulk ownership assignment or to index the content of files that did not have this option set when they were first indexed.

These options are useful when you change many files at once. You can use the Web Publisher client to index and update individual files.

8. To do a bulk assignment of ownership to all files that match your criteria, you can select Set document owner to and type in a username.

Be sure to type in a valid username because the server does not perform any validity checks on the name. This updates the owner property in each file's collection entry.

9. To index the document content, check Index document contents.

You can choose to index the documents' contents as well as their file metadata.

10. Click OK to begin indexing and updating web publishing.

• To get information on all the metadata being indexed, in the [NS-loader] section of webpub.conf set NS-debug-bulk=Y. Then a file named Bulk.Save is created under the server_root/https-server-id/search/collections/web_htm/idx/ directory. This file logs all the data that have been indexed.

• For Verity, you can append ";127" to include the NS-initparms in the [NS-search] section of webpub.conf and set NS-debug-log=Y in the[NS-loader] section of webpub.conf. This ensures that maximum logging is generated from Verity, and the log messages go into server_root/https-server-id/logs/nsloader.log.

• Report on the collection's data—You can produce a report on the current logical consistency of the web publishing collection's data. This lists all the files in the selected document directory and also lists all the records in the web publishing collection, regardless of which directory the collection data corresponds to. The report indicates which files are not yet indexed (and therefore don't have records in the web publishing collection) and which records have no source document (and therefore should be repaired). The report highlights errors and indicates what the result of the repair would be. For example, "Repair will delete Properties Record."

The report provides a short summary at the end of the log file, indicating how many directories and files have been checked, how many repairs are recommended, and how many errors have been encountered.

• Repair the collection—You can repair the web publishing collection's logical consistency. This function repairs the files in the selected document directory and produces a report similar to that from the Report function. The Repair function indicates on the report which repairs have been completed and what the repair accomplished. For example, "Repair: Removing Properties Record."
• Optimize the collection—You can optimize the web publishing collection to improve performance if you frequently add, delete, or update documents or directories in your collections. An analogy is defragmenting your hard drive. Optimizing is done automatically when you reindex or update a collection, so you should not need to do additional optimizing. One situation when you might want to optimize a collection is just before publishing it to another site or before putting it onto a read-only CD-ROM.

1. From the Server Manager, choose Web Publishing.
2. Click the Maintain Web Publishing Data link.

The web server displays the Maintain Web Publishing Data page.

3. Choose the directory that contains the web publishing data to be maintained.

You can define the scope of the Repair and Report functions by choosing the document directory to check through. If you want to use a different directory, click the View button to see a list of directories. You can report on or repair any directory or subdirectory that is listed.

Once you click the link for a directory, you return to the Maintain Web Publishing Data page and the directory name appears in the Document Directory field.

4. To also report on or repair the subdirectories within the specified directory, click Include Subdirectories.
5. To report on the collection, click Report. This reports on the selected document directory.
6. To repair the collection, click Repair.

This repairs inconsistencies in the selected document directory.

7. To optimize the collection, click Optimize.

This optimizes the entire web publishing collection.

To unlock a file, perform the following steps:

1. From the Server Manager, choose Web Publishing.
2. Click the Unlock File link.

The web server displays the Unlock File page.

3. Select the file or directory you want to unlock.

The Choose field displays the currently selected file or directory. If you want to unlock a different file or a file from another directory, click the View button to see a list of resources. You can unlock files that are listed or you can view the files in a listed directory, and select one of those files.

Once you click the unlock link for a file, you return to the Unlock File page and the filename appears in the Choose field.

4. Click OK to unlock the file.

This means that if you extend the maximum settings to add additional attributes, you cannot automatically use the new attributes in the existing web publishing collection. To allow this, you must use your file system to remove both the web_htm and link_mgr collection files from the search collections directory and then restart your server to automatically create a new web publishing collection for you. (The link_mgr collection is an internal file that's part of web publishing.)

To add a custom file property, perform the following steps:

1. From the Server Manager, choose Web Publishing.
2. Click the Add Custom Properties link.

The web server displays the Add Custom Properties page.

3. Type a name in the Property Name field. The name has these restrictions:

• It cannot duplicate an existing Web Publisher property name.
• It cannot exceed 128 characters.
• It cannot be "." or ".." or contain spaces.
• It cannot contain an underscore.
4. Select the property's type from the Property Type list.

This value is not modifiable. There is a limit to the number of each type you can have. These are the default settings:

• Text (a maximum of 30).
• Numeric (a maximum of 5).
• Date (a maximum of 5). Dates are formatted as month/day/year, and year can be two or four digits.

You can change the maximum settings for these in the webpub.conf file, although larger sets of attributes impact the performance of your server. See Configuring Manually for details on how to change the webpub.conf file.

• Select one of the Permissions buttons.
• Click either Read only or Modifiable. By default, this selection is set to Modifiable.

Note. For modifiable custom properties defined as META-tagged attributes, the value in the document is extracted only the first time the document is indexed. Because users can input a different value in the attribute field through the Web Publisher Services Properties page, the server ignores the META-tagged value in subsequent indexing. In this way, the user's value is not overwritten.

By default, this is set to Visible. This defines whether server clients can view the property through Web Publisher.

From this point onward, when files containing this attribute are indexed, the contents of the META attribute is used as the value of the property and you can search for files that contain this META-tagged property. The property must conform to the same conventions as property names.

1. From the Server Manager, choose Web Publishing.
2. Click the Manage Properties link.
3. The web server displays the Manage Properties page, which subsequently displays all available properties.

1. Click the Remove link for the property.

The web server displays the Remove Custom Property page.

2. Click OK to remove the property. Click Back to return to the Manage Properties page without removing the property.

1. Click the Edit link for the property.

The web server displays the Edit Custom Property page.

2. Change the property as needed.

You can only change the property's name, permissions, visibility and its option of whether to capture META-tagged attributes.

3. Click OK to update the property with your changes. Click Back to return to the Manage Properties page without editing the property. Click Reset to reset any property values you changed.

• netshare.html - The default text that appears in the right frame.
• banner.html - The banner across the top.
• home.html - The frameset itself.
• menu.html - The set of links in the left frame.
• test1.html - A sample file.
• test2.html - A sample file.

NS-idxattrn=CM_attributeName;displayName;TYPE;size

• n = attribute number
• attributeName = internal attribute name
• displayName = name displayed in Manage Properties page
• TYPE = TXT (text), NUM (numeric), or DAT (date)
• size = size of field Web Publishing attributes, listed in order of NS-idxattr number

• main.pat - displays the 3-paned Web Publisher Services interface
• toc.pat - displays the left-hand set of links and buttons displayed for a file
• dirtoc.pat - displays the left-hand set of links and buttons displayed for a folder (version history is omitted)
• sys-prop.pat - displays the properties page for a file
• dirps.pat - displays the properties page for a folder
• version.pat - displays the version history page for a file
• links.pat - displays the check links page for a file
• dirlink.pat - displays the check links page for a folder
• usrps.pat - displays the Custom Properties page

• variables defined in the configuration file, dblist.ini, as an index attribute (NS-idxattr)
• variables defined as pointers to other pages, with "-NS" suffix
• variables defined internally by Web Publisher

variableName[conditionalized output]

$$Title[<P>Title: <B>$$Title</B>]

Notice these aspects of the lines:

• The owner field is limited to 40 characters.
• The title and author fields are read-only.
• The lock status information is a checkbox with its own associated label that varies depending on whether the file is already locked or unlocked, as indicated by the value of $$CM_LOCK_VAL.
• The Rendition field only appears for files that have renditions available. It includes a pattern variable that points to the HTML version of the file and shows it in the right frame.