Contribute files from Development to Production server

[Ted Fitzpatrick]

Hi,

I'm looking for advice on how to move Contribute-authored files on a
development server to a production location once Contribute users press their
"Publish" button. Can Contribute be extended via JavaScript to fire off some
mechanism for transferring the newly-published files?

Thanks!

Ted

[niftybee]

I'm interested to know what other people use too. Or, if the Contribute Publishing Server has that functionality.

[chris974]

CPS has a forwarding function, where it will forward the information it
recieves, IE files published etc to some kindof system you can write - which
you can use then to copy the specific files to the production server.

I think it's only the latest version, comes with a very basic cold fusion
thing which does this, however i beleive it needs to be customised to allow any
kindof access restriction to it. It also comes with an RSS plugin too.

Here is something about it:
[url]http://livedocs.macromedia.com/contribute/31/cps/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhe[/url]
lp.htm?context=Contribute_Publishing_Services&file =extendi2.htm

There was also an article somewhere on Macromedia which mentioned this
extension, and then went on to say they ended up just overwriting the
functionality of the publish button anyway - which suggests that this can be
done, although didn't say how.

[jeremy_p]

I too have been looking into this and found that there is an API the explains
what type of information can be captured from Contribute about files as they
are published. With the latest version of CPS you can have web services fire
upon publishing pages and customize those services to send email notifications
and transfer files and so fourth. It was very easy to implement the basic file
transfer service that MM included with CPS but as mentioned, there is no
security to it and it lists all files by all users that have changed so we
found this wouldn't quite work for our needs.

We don't use Cold Fusion and only have the OEM version of JRun that installed
with CPS so we are having to roll our own solution. We are in the process of
creating a web service that will capture the info about the files and upload to
a DB so we can then use that to publish a page with rescricted viewing to allow
the users to see only thier files and uplaod them.

I would like to see an easier way to do this in the next version, but at least
we have the option of the web services.

[niftybee]

Thanks for the replies. It looks like a lot of good information in both posts
and links.

So I guess it is only possible with CPS? Unfortunately, I don't have
access/permission to install software on our Web servers, so I don't think I'll
be able to use CPS.

Anyone have non-CPS solutions? Is there any way to access the methods or data
that Contribute (without the CPS) uses to publish files?

[jeremy_p]

We use one server that has CPS on it and then we have a few other servers where
the content resides. CPS can police data between many sites and servers. I
haven't tried using it with a 3rd party hosted site as of yet, but so far we
don't seem to have any issues using it on 3 other internal servers. Hope this
helps.

[dmuniz]

You might want to consider the solution we implemented.
Our initial deployment of Contribute didnt included CPS so we had to come up
with our own way to move files from the Test server to the Production Server.
Our user make edit pages and publish changes to the Test server.
-Every night there is a batch file that goes thru the Web Directory that
zips up all the files that have changed during the day.
-That zip file is then FTP to the production server.
-The Production server then unzips the files to the WebRoot and the
Indexing directory.
We have been running like this since Contribute 3 came out.

If you are intrested in this approach just contact me and I will let you know
of some of the things to look for when implementing this.

[kirkaracha]

Auto-Deploying Web Pages to Multiple Sites Using Contribute, Contribute
Publishing Services, ColdFusion MX, and Microsoft SQL Server
[url]http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/contribute/articles/cps_autodeploy.html[/url]