1. Alfresco Web Content Management

2. About Web Content Management

What is it for?

• Manage the content of the website

What are the benefits?

• Separate the content from the layout

• Put the content in the hands of the business user

• Reduce maintenance cost

• Standardize the layout of the site

3. About Alfresco

Founded in January 2005 by:

• John Newton Co-Founder of Documentum

• John Powell Former COO, Business Objects

Backed by Accel Partners and Mayfield Fund

• $10 million US

Complete ECM solution

• Web Content Management

• Document Management

• Records Management

• Image Management

4. History of Alfresco

January 2005

• • Alfresco is founded John Newton, co-founder of Documentum and John Powell, former COO of Business Objects

October 2005

• • Alfresco 1.0 is released and includes only the documents management module

February 2006

• • Former Core Interwoven Team Join Alfresco, including Kevin Cochrane, Former VP Web Content Management at Interwoven

February 2007

• • Alfresco 2.0 is released and includes a Web Content Management module

5. Alfresco - Functional Advantages

Versioning of every website asset (image, text, etc.)

Whole website versioning

One-click rollback to any version of the site

Email-based production workflow

In-context preview

Easy access and modification of the content using:

• CIFS (access content like a file system)

• Alfresco Web client

6. Alfresco - Technical Advantages

Enterprise-class content repository

Supported open source (no vendor lock-in)

Easy deployment using CIFS (Common Internet File System)

Compatible with Java, .Net or any other language

Extremely flexible architecture

• Eliminate dependency between the content management system (CMS) and the website

• Eliminate compatibility issues (for example between the eCommerce software and the CMS)

7. Alfresco Reviews

Alfresco is a scalable and well-architected open source alternative for ECM (April 16, 2007 )

Alfresco: ECM that people will really use(April 27, 2007 ) 8. Alfresco Customers 9. Architecture 10. Alfresco makes the CMS transparent

CIFS expose the content as a standard file system

Deploy to any application server by binding the application server to a CIFS directory

Can support development with Java, .Net, PHP or any other compiled or scripting language

Transparent integration with any e-commerce solution or any third party software like ElasticPath

11. Alfresco Fundamentals Concepts

Web Project

• A web site or a web application

Web Form

• An XML schema compliant with W3C XForms standard

Web Content (Structured)

• An XML file that respect a Web Form XML Schema

Content (Unstructured)

• Any file (Image, PDF, XML, etc..)

Template (View)

• Add presentation to the content (XSLT, FreeMarker, etc)

12. Web Project

A web project is a web application managed by Alfresco

Alfresco manages every files in a web application including:

• Application content (XML, images, etc)

• Application scripts or compiled code

• Presentation template (XSLT, JSP, etc)

• Static HTML pages

• Configuration files

You can populate an Alfresco web project by importing any existing site into Alfresco

13. Web Form

Web forms are used to enter structured content

Web forms are defined with an XML schema compliant with W3C XForms standard

To create a web form you just import the XML schema

Each element in the form is defined a type

Alfresco generate UX control for each type of element.

14. Content

Alfresco save the web content as XML file

You can configure Alfresco to save web content:

• In a specific folder

• In the folder where the user is located

Unstructured content is save directly in the web application

You can link unstructured content to web content using the file picker control

15. Template

Template are used to generate web pages (or PDF documents) from content

Each template is associated with a primary web form but can query any content

Templates can be applied by the CMS (limited to XSLT, XSL-FO and FreeMarker) or by the site logic

If a template use content from more than one XML file it is recommended that the template be applied by the site logic

16. Sandbox

Each user as it own sandbox where he can modify the site without affecting others users

Each user see all the files in the production site plus any modifications made by the user

17. Versioning

All workspace assets are versioned

You can revert to any version with just one click

The whole production web site is versioned

You can revert to any version with just one click

18. Workflow

Alfresco workflow is implemented using JBoss jBPM

Is it possible to define complex workflows using jBPM

Two basic workflows are provided: Serial and Parallel

Workflows can be applied to specific directory or file

You can define multiple workflows each with different users

19. Production environment

Alfresco production environment uses 3 servers:

• The CMS server that server run the repository and web client

• The preview server that provide in context preview capability

• The production server that run the production site

The CMS server must be a Java (J2SE 5.0) application server (Tomcat, JBoss etc)

A Tomcat preview server come pre-configured

It is possible to configure other preview servers (IIS, JBoss etc)

The production server is mounted using CIFS and can be any application server (Apache, IIS, Tomcat etc)

20. Limitations

A replication module will only be available in version 2.0.1 to enable remote deployment

• Workaround : deploy using CIFS on a single machine

The file picker control is very limited: No image preview, not possible to place restrictions on files upload location

• Workaround : would need custom development

21. Example:Kozy Shack recipes 22. Recipe Page 23.

Title

Ingredients

Preparation

Preparation time

Yield

Recipe Page Elements Header Links to all the recipes Footer Picture Other featured recipes 24. Enter content for the page 25. Automatically generated content

Recipe links are automatically generated on each recipe page

26. Automatically generated selection

All recipes automatically appear as options in Featured Recipes menus

27. Demo

Create a web form

Create a web project

Import an existing web site

Preview the web site

Deploy the new web site in production

Create web content

Modify web content

Deploy the web content in production

Rollback deployment