Rollback
One final replication feature in Site Server 3.0 that can save a lot of time lets you roll back a deployment. Imagine you accidentally deployed a file that you were working on, and the new file overwrote a working copy of the same file on the live server. To fix the problem, you just go to that project on the live server and click Rollback. Site Server will roll back the entire project, and the previous version of the document will come back online.
You can set how many rollbacks you'll allow on each machine, but you can't set the number of rollbacks on a per-project basis. So if you set your site to allow four rollbacks, and you perform one rollback on four different projects, the server won't let you roll back any other projects. Finally, you can't roll back Metabase replications, so make sure you have your configurations set correctly before you deploy a Metabase replication.
Installation Issues
Although Site Server is a time saver, it's not perfect. I ran into a few problems when I installed the software for the first time. After I tried the installation a few times, I identified three problems.
First, the installation says you must have Internet Explorer (IE) 4.01 installed on your system. What the installation doesn't tell you is that you must also install Microsoft Outlook Express during your IE installation. Site Server needs to be able to find a Windows Messaging API (MAPI) associated with Outlook Express to send email from the Site Server applications.
The second problem I encountered was a mistake I made after correcting the first problem. After I discovered I didn't have everything I needed installed with IE, I reinstalled the Web browser. In small print, one of the Site Server manuals tells you that you can't remove and reinstall IE 4.01 after you install IIS. IIS won't function properly. To solve the problem, you have to remove and reinstall both IIS and IE 4.01 for everything to work. Keep my experience in mind when you install Site Server on your live server. If you don't have your IE and IIS installations in order, you have to start over.
Having botched my IIS installation, I wanted to find a way to preserve my current IIS configuration so that I could restore my IIS settings after I performed the reinstall. One way is to use the metabackup.vbs script in the Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 Resource Kit. You type
cscript metabackup
to create a samplebackup file. Then you run the restore script
cscript metabackrest.vbs
after your reinstall IIS, and you're back in business.
The third problem was something I just missed, but it was easy to fix. If you plan to use SQL Server 6.5 as your database, you must install SQL Server Service Pack 4 (SP4). But the part that's easy to miss is that in addition to running SQL Server SP4, you need to copy the updated version of sqlserver.exe from the Site Server 3.0 CD-ROM to your system.
One final installation consideration has to do with how you set up your destination machines when you deploy your Web content. Because you can use any number of configurations, you'll want to read up on the related licensing issues. One copy of Site Server 3.0 lets you install two copies of the Content Deployment feature: one copy on the staging system and one copy on the development system. This flexibility is good because you need to install the Content Deployment portion of Site Server 3.0 on each machine that is part of your deployment environment. Also, keep in mind that Site Server 3.0's Content Deployment installation is more than 70MB, of which 40MB is documentation.
From Publishing to Indexing
I think Site Server 3.0 has come a long way toward becoming a standalone product. It now contains features I want and will soon need to use on my Web site. Of the tools I've mentioned, the Content Deployment feature has the most potential for simplifying content management. Its implementation in a multiserver environment makes deploying and updating content easy and consistent, and it provides you with the ability to roll back a deployment if something goes wrong. Deploying multiple Web servers manually, especially the rollback, takes too much time and opens you up to more problems. Next month, I'll show you how the Site Server 3.0 Knowledge Management Solution can help you index different types of content and serve up that information to your end users easily and efficiently.