Configuring web publishing


etscape Enterprise Server 3.0 clients can use Netscape 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, document version control, search, agent services, access control, and link management.

As the server administrator, you can set many options that define how web publishing works for your server clients and how your server's web publishing data is maintained. One of the most important functions you can perform for your users is to create a database of searchable web publishing data. This requires using the Index and Update Properties function to index a set of documents and directories so that when users start up Web Publisher, they can search on the contents and properties of these files.

Other web publishing setup and configuration functions are:

For further information about Netscape Web Publisher, see the online Web Publisher User's Guide. This is available through the online help system in user components such as agent services, search, and Web Publisher. To access the help system, you can use the Help menu command in Web Publisher, or you can click the Help button on one of the search interface forms, on the Agent Services page, or on the Web Publisher Services page.

Setting access control for owner

The access control system supports a special user called owner. When an ACL rule designates the user to be the owner, the permissions defined by this rule apply to the owner assigned by Web Publisher for each document. For example:

allow (write, delete) user = owner;
Note
Do not create a user with the username of owner.
Ownership of web publishing documents can be assigned either through the Web Publishing|Index and Update Properties form or through Web Publisher. The Index and Update Properties form 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.

Only the owner can modify the access control (ACL) rules for a file. These rules define the actions users can perform on the file, such as moving, copying, renaming, or deleting it. An owner can reassign ownership of a file to another user, and if a file has no owner, anyone with a valid username can identify themselves as its owner. Because the username identified as the owner of a file can change, any access control that you place on a file should target the owner of a file rather than a specific username.

If the default access control (ACL) that governs your server is not restrictive or flexible enough for your web publishing needs, you can use the Server Preferences|Restrict Access function to create an ACL that is more appropriate for web publishing.

For example, you could create an ACL like this:

acl "uri=/publisher/";
allow (read, execute, list, info) user = anyone;
allow (write, delete) user = owner;
This ACL sets a restriction such that only the owner of a file within the additional document directory of /publisher can modify or delete the file.

See Chapter 6, "Controlling access to your server" for more information about setting access control.

Note
If you expect web publishing users to publish documents to a directory, you need to set the Unix file permissions to give them write access to that directory. You should also disable write permissions for directories you do not want them to publish to.

Indexing and updating properties

Before users can perform a search across a set of documents and directories, information about the documents and directories needs to be indexed into the web publishing database. The web publishing database is stored as a search collection and is created as part of the server installation process. Initially it contains no data and must be populated by indexing the documents in the document directories.

The Web Publisher window lists the files and folders that are in the document directory selected when a user starts up Web Publisher, but the data initially is not indexed (and therefore is not available for searching) and the files have no owners (so anyone can define their username as the owner of a file, and thereby be able to set the access control for a file).

You can use the Index and Update Properties form to perform bulk indexing of documents to create searchable web publishing data and you can also use it to do a bulk assignment of owner for the files included in the collection. You can restrict or expand the scope of documents and directories to be indexed, and you can index just the file properties, called metadata, or you can also index the documents' contents. If you choose to index the contents of the files, you can search on any word in the documents although publishing and uploading files with Web Publisher may be slightly slower.

  1. From the Server Manager, choose Web Publishing.
  2. Click the Index and Update Properties link.
  3. 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 form and the directory name appears in the Document Directory field.
  4. To also index the subdirectories within the specified directory, click the Include Subdirectories checkbox.
  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 this pattern (complete with parentheses) to index all HTML documents:
    (*.htm|*.html) You can define multiple wildcards in an expression. See Chapter 3, "Managing your server" for details of the syntax for wildcard patterns.
  6. If this is the first time you index web publishing documents, check the "Index unindexed documents" checkbox. 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 check the "Set document owner to" checkbox 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 the "Index document contents" checkbox. You can choose to index the documents' contents as well as their file metadata.
  10. Click OK to begin indexing and updating web publishing.

A summary of the indexing operation is displayed in the web browser window. The information is also logged to a local log file.

Note
Once you have indexed documents into the web publishing collection, you should not change any document directory's URL mapping or the collection's entries will target the URL mapping to the wrong physical file location. If you have to change a document directory, you need to reindex the documents in the new location. You can use the Repair function to remove the indexed data from the old directory mapping.

Changing the web publishing state

You can deactivate web publishing and you can turn it back on. If you turn off web publishing, you also turn off link management. Documents that are subsequently moved or renamed may have incorrect links, and the link status database may not be up to date. The solution is to use the Web Publishing|Link Management function to manually turn link management off and then turn it back on again. This starts the link management function up again with an empty link status database. See "Changing the link management state" for more details of link management.

Note
If you turn web publishing off, all agents for the server are also turned off and clients cannot use Netscape Web Publisher to access agent services. When web publishing is turned back on, agents that were turned off solely because web publishing was turned off are turned back on. Agents that were disabled for other reasons are still disabled.
To change the web publishing state:

  1. Select your server on the Server Administration page.
  2. From the Server Manager, choose Web Publishing.
  3. Click the Web Publishing State link.
  4. To turn web publishing on, click the On radio button. To turn it off, click the Off radio button. The default value is On.
  5. Click OK to change the state of web publishing on your server.

Setting the web publishing language

You can change the web publishing language to any language supported by the user's installation, and these are listed for the server administrator in a drop-down list on the form.

Note
Be cautious when using this function. If you change the language of a collection, the system deletes all the existing data in the collection.
  1. From the Server Manager, choose Web Publishing.
  2. Click the Web Publishing Language link.
  3. Select a language from the drop-down list. The default is English.
  4. Click OK to set the language.

Your changes are reflected in the language.conf file, which is located in the server_root/plugins/search/admin directory.

After you change the web publishing language, your server is automatically restarted to apply the change.

Maintaining web publishing data

Web Publisher maintains multiple sets of data about the documents that are in the web publishing collection. When all web publishing data is synchronized, each file in the chosen document directory has a record in the web publishing collection and every property record in the collection has a corresponding file in the document directory.

Although you can limit the scope of the Repair and Report functions to checking only the files in a particular document directory for collection records, every property record in the collection is checked for a corresponding source document regardless of which directory the file might be in.

Occasionally, these can become out of synch. You can obtain a report on the state of your web publishing files, and then repair one or more directories as needed. For example, if a document that was indexed into a collection is deleted, there is a record in the collection that no longer has any corresponding source document. Repairing removes the collection records for any such document.

You can perform these functions to maintain your web publishing data:

Periodically, you may want to maintain your web publishing collections. You can perform the following collection management tasks:

  1. From the Server Manager, choose Web Publishing.
  2. Click the Maintain Web Publishing Data link.
  3. 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 form and the directory name appears in the Document Directory field.
  4. To also report on or repair the subdirectories within the specified directory, click the Include Subdirectories checkbox.
  5. To report on the collection, click the Report button. This reports on the selected document directory.
  6. To repair the collection, click the Repair button. This repairs inconsistencies in the selected document directory.
  7. To optimize the collection, click the Optimize button. This optimizes the entire web publishing collection.

Changing the link management state

At times, you may not need automatic link checking and updating. At these times, you can turn link management off to conserve resources and to improve searching and indexing performance. When you turn link management off, Web Publisher stops doing automatic link checking and you cannot use the Check Links function from the Web Publisher Services page.

You can also use this form to selectively turn the automatic link update feature on and off. When automatic link updating is on, Web Publisher changes the outgoing and incoming links in a file to keep them up to date as files are moved and renamed in Web Publisher. Because this revises the modification date for any file that has updated links, this feature is off by default.

Note
The automatic link update feature only affects links outgoing to or incoming from moved or renamed files. It does not affect HTML files that are being uploaded or published. Provided that link management is on, the links in these files are always updated as part of the upload or publish operation.
For further information about link management in Web Publisher, access the online Web Publisher User's Guide through the Help menu command in Web Publisher or the Help button on the search interface, the Agent Services page, or the Web Publisher Services page.

  1. From the Server Manager, choose Web Publishing.
  2. Click the Link Management link.
  3. To change the state of link management, select the On or Off radio button.
    To deactivate link management, select the Off radio button. This clears the link status information so that when you try to check links in Web Publisher, you get an error message, and you cannot access any link status information. To reactivate link management, select the On radio button. This starts link management up again, which creates a new empty link status database. To get link status information, you must again check links for all your files. Links that have changed status since you turned link management off may have to be manually fixed.
  4. To turn automatic link updating on, select the On radio button. You can only turn this on when link management is on.
    This starts up automatic link updating, which revises links from or to files that are subsequently moved or renamed. It does not, however, affect the links in any files that were moved or renamed while automatic link updating was turned off.
  5. Click OK to apply your change.

Setting the version control archive

Netscape Web Publisher includes a version control system for keeping track of files and documents as they are updated and changed. Web Publisher manages version control for you, allowing you to compare different versions of a file, providing version history for any file under version control, and automatically incrementing version numbers for files edited under version control.

For further information about version control in Web Publisher, access the online Web Publisher User's Guide through the Help menu command in Web Publisher or the Help button on the search interface, the Agent Services page, or the Web Publisher Services page.

Files under version control are stored in an archive directory. To specify which directory you want Web Publisher to use as the version control archive directory, follow these steps:

  1. From the Server Manager, choose Web Publishing.
  2. Click the Version Control link.
  3. Type the full path for the archive directory in the Archive Path field. The path in the default installation is server_root/plugins/content_mgr/archive. Web Publisher uses this archive to store all files under version control.
    If you are changing the archive directory but keeping the version history intact, you must have (a) already created the new directory, (b) moved the version history files to the new directory, and (c) deleted the old archive directory. If you don't want to keep the old version history, you don't need to move the files to the new directory, but you must do the other two steps (a and b) or this function will fail.
  4. Click OK to set the archive directory.

Unlocking files

If a file that has been locked in Web Publisher is required for another user, you can unlock it. This is true for files that were locked manually by the client or automatically by Web Publisher as part of an edit or download operation.

For further information about locking and unlocking files in Web Publisher, access the online Web Publisher User's Guide through the Help menu command in Web Publisher or the Help button on the search interface, the Agent Services page, or the Web Publisher Services page.

Be cautious in using this function because by unlocking a file that was locked, you are forcing the file to be available for editing by other users. This is contrary to the intent of the lock owner, who may not know of the unlocking operation.
To unlock a file:

  1. From the Server Manager, choose Web Publishing.
  2. Click the Unlock File link.
  3. 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 form and the filename appears in the Choose field.
  4. Click OK to unlock the file.

After you unlock a file, your server is automatically restarted to incorporate the lock change.

NoteIf you want to unlock a file that begins with a period, as in .jshrc, you cannot use this form to perform the unlocking. You will have to log into Web Publisher as the user and unlock the file there.

Adding custom properties

As server administrator, you can add your own custom Web Publisher file properties. These properties are added to the default set of file properties stored in the web publishing collection. Server clients can view visible custom properties in Web Publisher and use them in their document searches.

For further information about viewing and modifying properties in Web Publisher, access the online Web Publisher User's Guide through the Help menu command in Web Publisher or the Help button on the search interface, the Agent Services page, or the Web Publisher Services page.

Note
If you want to add another custom property after creating the maximum number of custom properties for a given type, you cannot remove an existing custom property and "reuse" the property's slot in the collection by adding a new custom property of the same type. For example, if you want to add a numeric property after 5 have already been created, you cannot delete one of the existing 5 numeric properties and add another numeric property in its place. The only way to use the new property is to remove the entire collection and recreate it with the new property.
To add a custom file property:

  1. From the Server Manager, choose Web Publishing.
  2. Click the Add Custom Properties link.
  3. Type a name in the Property Name field. The name has these restrictions:
  4. Select the property's type from the Property Type scrollable list. This value is not modifiable. There is a limit to the number of each type you can have. These are the default settings:
    You can change the maximum settings for these in the webpub.conf file, although larger sets of attributes impact the performance of your server.

Note

You cannot use the additional attributes in the existing web publishing collection. If you want to use the new attributes in the web publishing collection, 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. See "Configuring manually" in Chapter 11, "Using search" for details on how to change the webpub.conf file.

  1. Click one of the Permissions buttons, either Read only or Modifiable. By default, this 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.

  1. Click one of the Visible to User buttons, either Invisible or Visible. By default, this is set to Visible. This defines whether server clients can view the property through Web Publisher.
  2. If the property you are adding is actually an HTML file attribute that has been tagged with the HTML META tag, you can check this checkbox. 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.

Note

Because all attributes tagged with META are defined as text, sorting operations on fields containing dates or numbers do not sort in the expected date or number order. With this feature, you can redefine META-tagged attributes to dates or numeric values to obtain valid sort sequences.

  1. Click OK to create the new custom property.

Managing properties

You can list all the file properties that are available for use. These include the default set plus any new custom properties you have created. You can remove or edit only those properties that you have created. These have active Remove and Edit links in the first two columns.

To manage file properties:

  1. From the Server Manager, choose Web Publishing.
  2. Click the Manage Properties link to obtain a listing of all available properties.

To remove a custom property:

  1. Click the Remove link for the property. The Remove Custom Property form appears.
  2. Click OK to remove the property. Click Back to return to the Manage Properties page without removing the property.

To edit a custom property:

  1. Click the Edit link for the property. The Edit Custom Property form appears.
  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.


Copyright 1997 Netscape Communications Corporation. All rights reserved.