This chapter covers information about managing multiple web projects using one installation of Alfresco WCM. This means you can leverage a single instance of Alfresco WCM to stage and manage many websites. This chapter focuses on reusing assets such as images, forms, and workflows across multiple web projects. This chapter also introduces you to a concept called "layered folder", where you could logically use a folder in many websites without copying the content in multiple places.
By the end of this chapter, you will have learned how to:
- Configure and use multiple web projects
- Reuse forms, templates, and workflows across many websites
- Use a single set of media assets across multilingual websites
- Set up and use layered folders
Within a single instance of Alfresco you can create as many web projects as you can.
You can have common assets shared across many of these web projects. Once created, you can use the same web forms, templates, workflows, and deployment targets across multiple projects. You can also have the same set of users managing these multiple sites. For example, a user could be a Content Manager on Web Project1 and Content Reviewer on Web Project2.
When creating a new project or editing the web project settings, you will notice the list of all of the available web forms. Basically, the forms that are defined in Company Home | Data Dictionary | Web Forms are available to all of the web projects along with templates and workflows associated with those forms.
You can add the selected web forms to a project by clicking on the Add to List button, as shown in the following screenshot:
Once a web form is added to a web project, you can overwrite the form details such as the output filename pattern, you can configure the workflow locally as per the web project approval process, and you can also configure the output template settings as shown in the following screenshot. These are very flexible ways of defining the forms and workflows globally, and overwriting them locally:
In some scenarios you might want to create web projects that are similar in nature. For example, marketing websites for each product might have similar features, and they might be managed by the same set of people following similar workflow approval processes. The customer extranet websites for each of your customers might fall into this category.
In such scenarios using a typical website as a template to recreate many such websites will not only save you time, but also sets a well-defined process in the organization. You can select such a web project as a template, as shown in the following screenshot:
Now while creating a similar website, you can create a new web project based on an existing template web project. The Staging Sandbox structure, web forms, workflow, and users will be copied from the selected web project. This must be done while creating a new web project, as shown in the following screenshot:
Once a new web project is created, you can always overwrite the existing configuration. You can also create new forms, workflows, and structures as needed.