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Streamlining News Sharing Across Multiple Websites with Database Publishing

Learn how Database Publishing in Cascade Server facilitates seamless news sharing among interconnected sites, avoiding duplication and multiple publishes. Utilize custom metadata and PHP queries for efficient content distribution.

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Streamlining News Sharing Across Multiple Websites with Database Publishing

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  1. Database Publishing Jon Whitener Web Communications Specialist University of Detroit Mercy

  2. How many of you… • New to Cascade Server? • Are adminstrators? • Use Cascade for multiple, separate but related sites? • Have worked on any Web site that pulled data dynamically from a DB? • Have used Cascade’sDatabase Publishing?

  3. What isDatabase Publishing?

  4. Cascade Server

  5. External Database Cascade Server

  6. Site A Site B Site C External Database Site D Cascade Server Site 5

  7. Dynamic sites are…

  8. Dynamic sites are…

  9. Example:UDM news articles

  10. UDM’s sites College of Health Professions College of Business Admin. www (General site) School of Dentistry College of Engineering & Science College of Liberal Arts & Education Alumni

  11. The idea: share news • Enable each site to share (access / use) the news articles of every other site • Selective inclusion • E.g. • The Business site can include news from the Engineering site, like Ford CEO visit • The Alumni site can pull articles from any site where alumni are mentioned

  12. Sharing isn’t always easy • Sharing articles withinCascade was difficult and/or inefficient • Index blocks • Highly contorted XSL • Publishing to various sites also tricky • Publish all news pages on all sites • We did get it working …

  13. Sharing isn’t always easy • Upgrade to version 5broke it

  14. Database Publishingoffers a better way

  15. “DBP” for short (“DaBaPu” didn’t test well)

  16. The goals • Enable separate sites to share news articles • Avoid duplication of content • Avoid multiple publishes for each article creation / edit • Use a tested, familiar technique

  17. How to do it with DBP?

  18. In addition to their separate target sites, all sites publish to the shared, external database

  19. Sites can now select from all news articles

  20. Tagging articles • Articles have custom metadata to indicate appropriate audiences • Alumni, current students, faculty, etc. • Also, path and Site ID are informative • Live sites can select appropriate articles using these criteria

  21. How does it work?

  22. Overview • Set up external database • Set up Administration assets in Cascade • Create content assets in Cascade • Create PHP Web page that can perform live queries of external database

  23. Set up external database • MySQL 5.0+ required • Grant access to Cascade Server • Grant access to production Web servers • May want direct access (e.g. Navicat) • Follow security practices (omitted here)

  24. Set up external database • External database schema is set by Hannon Hill • We’ll look at schema later

  25. Set up CascadeAdministration assets • Transport • Target • Destination • Template • Configuration Set • Metadata Set • Data Definition • Content Type

  26. Transport

  27. Transport Site Id User

  28. Transport “Test Transport” option appears when a Transport is selected Test

  29. Target Base Folder Out. File Ext.

  30. Destination DB Transport

  31. Test Destination

  32. Test Destination

  33. Template

  34. Configuration Set • We create a new Set here • One Configuration pointing to new DBP Template • Would likely make sense to add DBP Configuration to one of your existing Configuration Sets

  35. Configuration Set

  36. Bear with me …

  37. Data Definition

  38. Metadata Set • Custom (“dynamic”) metadata will be used to make the news articles easily selectable • Here, we add “audience” information, i.e. indicate which audiences would be interested in the news article

  39. Metadata Set

  40. Metadata Set • When creating / editing a page, custom metadata will look like:

  41. Content Type

  42. Site ID cascades up • Some administrative assets are specific to a site number, i.e. the Site ID • Transport • Destination • Target • Template • Configuration  Configuration Set • Content Type

  43. Create content assets • Create Page with new Content Type

  44. Create content assets • Create Page with new Content Type

  45. Now we’re getting tothe good stuff • Let’s publish a page from the general site – Site ID 1

  46. Peek at the DB • External database contains five tables • page • metadata • metadata_custom • file • folder • We’re concerned with the first three

  47. Table: page • After first Page publish, we have 1 record:

  48. Table: page • After first Page publish, we have 1 record:

  49. Table: metadata • One record, with the fields you know from a Cascade’s Wired Metadata pane: idhere matches page.metadata_id

  50. Table: metadata_custom • Here, we have two records for the page, because we selected two checkbox values First record Second record Foreign key page.id

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