The configuration files for the virtual server can be found in the <alfresco home>/virtual-tomcat/conf directory. To enable previews on a development machine, you need to modify the alfrescovirtserver.properties file to utilize the Alfresco wildcard DNS service. The alfresco.virtserv.domain value needs to be updated to replace 127-0-0-1 with the IP of the Alfresco local machine, substituting all "." with dashes:

# Alfresco's free/public wildcard domain service ("EchoDNS")
# returns resource records with a TTL of 1 day. Therefore,
# the run-time overhead is quite minimal. Once the machine
# has done a name lookup, it will cache the result for the
# next 24 hours (or until you reboot).
#
alfresco.virtserver.domain=127-0-0-1.ip.alfrescodemo.net

If the IP of the Alfresco machine is 192.168.1.25, update alfresco.virtserver.domain to alfresco.virtserver.domain=192-168-1-25.ip.alfrescodemo.net.

Alfresco Virtual Server needs to be restarted at this point.

The general format for Alfresco virtual hyperlink is:

http://virtual-hostname.www--sandbox.virtualization-domain:port/request-path

where the virtual-hostname is defined as the DNS name when creating a web project, and the virtualization-domain is the wildcarded domain name entry that maps to the Alfresco Virtualization Server. The default port for a virtualization server is 8180. Given that a web project was created with "test" as the DNS name, (*.virtualserver.unico.com is a DNS entry for Virtualization Server) and is installed on the default port, the following are true:

The AVM repository and its virtual stores are mapped into the virtual Tomcat working directory:

$VIRTUAL_TOMCAT_HOME/work/Catalina/avm.alfresco.localhost/.

This working directory will contain directories like the following, which are similar to the naming CIFS convention for virtual stores:

TABLE[
$-1$mysite--admin--preview$ROOT/ $-1$silly--admin--preview$ROOT/
$-1$mysite--admin$ROOT/ $-1$silly--admin$ROOT/
$-1$mysite--alice--preview$ROOT/ $-1$silly--alice--preview$ROOT/
$-1$mysite--alice$ROOT/ $-1$silly--alice$ROOT/
$-1$mysite--bob--preview$ROOT/ $-1$silly--preview$ROOT/
$-1$mysite--bob$ROOT/ $-1$silly-$ROOT/
$-1$mysite--preview$ROOT/ host-manager/
$-1$mysite$ROOT/ manager/
$42$mysite$ROOT/]

Configure the virtual server to allow the previewing of content and review some of the content in the CIGNEX web project in the user's sandbox. Once you are satisfied that the preview is working, submit the whole project to staging. After the submission is complete, preview the website in the Staging Sandbox.

Click on Submit All to send all files to the staging environment. Test preview in the Staging Sandbox. Previewing in the User and Staging Sandboxes should work.