Sites licensed for Replication can automate the distribution of replica copies of sites created in CommonSpot to read-only production servers. Replication environments consist of an authoring server and one or more read-only production servers, also known as ROPS or Target Servers.
Configuring a site for replication provides the important advantage of allowing you to maintain authoring servers locally, while locating read-only servers remotely for performance, security, load balancing, and redundancy benefits.
Incremental changes made on an authoring server are transferred to the target server at either scheduled intervals or whenever a change is detected on the authoring server. In addition, site administrators can perform “on demand” replication at any time.
CommonSpot servers can be licensed to handle multiple web sites, with replication configured on a site-by-site basis. Each site maintains its own replication settings and schedule.
Once a replication record is configured on the authoring server, file transfer cannot take place until replication is approved on the target server. This process requires the creation of a target server site if one doesn’t already exist and target server approval. Once initially approved, all future replications are automatically approved unless explicitly denied by the target server administrator.
Each replication target server must have unique, valid CommonSpot license keys, and authoring must be disabled in both server and customer keys.
Important Note: License terms allow for Replication read-only servers to communicate with one authoring server only.
On the authoring server, click Replication in the left panel of the Site Administration dashboard to display options for configuring the replication process, as shown below.
Replication requires Site Administration permissions.
Replication Directories
In addition to automatically replicating files created within the CommonSpot authoring environment (CommonSpot pages, templates, images, uploaded documents, etc.), CommonSpot’s replication service can also automatically detect file-system level changes (additions, deletions, and modifications) to specified non-commonspot directories and replicate changes to one or more target servers.
To automatically replicate files created outside of CommonSpot (custom ColdFusion modules, Render Handlers, and Datasheet Modules, for example), you must identify the directory location of these files by registering them in CommonSpot.
You can register:
Site Relative Directories - Non-subsite directories off the site root (these include the /style/, /datasheet-modules/, and the /rte-snippets/ directories)
Subsite Relative Directories - Subdirectories under each subsite (for example, /customcf/, /images/, /templates/, and /presentation/ directories)
External Directories - Directories outside of the site (typically directories that support your web sites, such as application directories)
CommonSpot provides a summary count of the registered directories and replicates any changes to the specified replication target server(s) under the conditions you specify.
Related Links
You can download PDF versions of the Content Contributor's, Administrator's, and Elements Reference documents from the support section of paperthin.com (requires login).
For technical support: