SQL Server Magazine

Early versions of Microsoft's Site Server suite of Web creation and management tools were not much more than collections of software that Microsoft couldn't use elsewhere, so the company lumped everything into one package. However, Site Server 3.0 introduces a whole new ball game. Microsoft has refined parts of previous Site Server incarnations, but most of the latest software suite consists of new and useful applications. (For an overview of Site Server 2.0, see Paula Sharick, "Site Server 2.0," June 1998.)

Site Server 3.0 is a massive add-on to Internet Information Server (IIS) 4.0. By itself, IIS is a great Web server, and Site Server lets you add flexible and powerful applications to the core strengths of Windows NT and IIS 4.0. Site Server 3.0 includes several new features such as the Microsoft Site Server 3.0 Publishing Solution, the Microsoft Site Server 3.0 Knowledge Management Solution, and the Microsoft Site Server 3.0 Analysis Solution.

The Publishing Solution and Knowledge Management Solution are the most exciting new features. Microsoft has updated the Analysis Solution, which lets you create reports on Site Server 3.0 and Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition applications (e.g., Ad Server and Membership Directory). The Analysis Solution is basically the same tool that Paula Sharick covered in the June 1998 issue, so I'll cover the Publishing Solution this month and the Knowledge Management Solution next month.

Publishing Web Content 101
The Publishing Solution is a multistep process that helps users submit, gain approval for, and deploy content on a company's intranet. Although some companies will use this application as a complete solution for managing all their intranet content, others will just want to plug some of the software's functionality in to their existing mechanisms.

Three groups within an organization play a part in the Web content publishing process: content authors, site editors, and site administrators. The content author submits the content to the site, the site editor determines whether the content is appropriate for posting, and the site administrator creates the functionality and the rules for posting the content.

The content author can either drag the content in its original form onto an ActiveX submission icon on the Content Management page, as Screen 1, page 188, shows, or double-click the icon and browse directories to locate the file for upload. After submitting the document, the content author must apply several site-specific tags to the document. The first tag is the content type (e.g., job postings or announcements), which lets you categorize and tag documents different people submit to the site. The other tags let you apply content attributes. The content author assigns a title, abstract, author, and editor if necessary. Site Server uses these attributes to manage and index the content. Based on the rules that the site administrator sets for different topics, the Publishing Solution might automatically publish some content on the site and prevent other content from going online until the site editor reviews the material. However, this review process, or Editorial View, is limited. The site editor can only approve the content, delete it, or edit the content properties, as Screen 2 shows; the site editor can't change the content. These same limitations apply to the content authors after they submit their content for review. As a result, the site editor can accept the content as is, recategorize and publish the content on the site, or delete the content and force the content author to start over.

Putting the Publishing Solution to Work
Now that you have a sense of how the Publishing Solution works, let's look at an example. Imagine that I want to use the Publishing Solution to manage the posting of the Windows NT Magazine UPDATE online newsletter internally. I can either edit the sample content file that comes with Site Server or create a new one. I decided to create a new file, which wasn't too difficult. I used the makecm.vbs script file that comes with Site Server to create my content project (i.e., the directories where you store the content).

The makecm.vbs file is in the \microsoft site server\ siteserver\publishing directory. To create the UPDATENews project, I opened the command prompt, changed into the directory where the makecm.vbs file resides, and typed

cscript makecm.vbs /s:ntwebtest /v:updatenews /a:updatenews /d:"c:microsoft site server\data\publishing\updatenews"

This command runs makecm.vbs, creates an UPDATENews application (/a) in a virtual UPDATENews directory (/v) on the ntwebtest server (/s), and places the UPDATENews application (i.e., the UPDATENews project) in the \microsoft site server\data\publishing\updatenews directory. After I created the new project, I used Site Server's WebAdmin browser-based administration tool to configure the properties for this new content area. These properties include setting the content types that content authors can apply to the content submissions and specifying whether the site editor needs to approve certain types of submissions before the content can go live. After I configured the properties for the new content area, I used an HTML editing tool to edit existing, and create new, content pages. Because the pages you're working with can contain so many page includes (i.e., pointers to other content areas), you'll probably find yourself repeating many of these steps.

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