Book Image

Building Websites with Microsoft Content Management Server

Book Image

Building Websites with Microsoft Content Management Server

Overview of this book

Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 is a dynamic web publishing system with which you can build websites quickly and cost-efficiently. MCMS provides the administration, authoring, and data management functionality, and you provide the website interface, logic, and workflow. Once your website is up and running, your content contributors can add and edit content on their own, without the need to work with developers or the IT department. First time developers of Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 face a relatively steep learning curve. Not only are they expected to be conversant in the Microsoft .NET Framework, they are also required to be familiar with the concepts of MCMS 2002. Many beginners to MCMS start out by looking at the example site that ships with the product; tweaking it, dissecting it and turning it inside out using the obscure code comments as markers. However, when it comes to starting their own website from scratch, many are baffled ? where do they begin? This book exists to answer that question; teaching the essential concepts of MCMS 2002 in a clear, straightforward and practical manner. Containing answers to some of the most asked questions in developer newsgroups, this book is a treasure trove of tricks and tips for solving the problems faced by MCMS developers. This is a unique resource focused exclusively on the needs of developers using MCMS. It doesn?t waste time and pages on user or administrator level information that is well covered in other documentation. It?s a distillation of practical experience that developers need to get results, fast. The authors carefully structured example project complements and extends the knowledge gained from an initial look at the examples that ship with MCMS.
Table of Contents (28 chapters)
Building Websites with Microsoft Content Management Server
Credits
About the Authors
Introduction

The Components of MCMS


Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 runs on the Windows platform (Windows 2000 Professional, Windows 2000 Server, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003). It makes use of Internet Information Services (IIS) to deliver dynamic web pages and Microsoft SQL Server 2000 as its content repository.

Authoring is performed using either the browser-based component (Web Author), or Microsoft Word (when installed with Authoring Connector).

Developers use Visual Studio .NET to develop ASP.NET template files, a special kind of web form that defines the layout and behavior of each dynamically generated web page. Templates in the content repository are managed using MCMS Template Explorer, an add-on within Visual Studio .NET. The MCMS Publishing Application Programming Interface (API) is used for retrieving and updating content in the repository.

Several administrative interfaces are provided for managing the site structure and global settings: Site Manager, Database Configuration Application, and the Server Configuration Application.

Content is transported from one server to another using the Site Deployment Manager, and custom scripts are built using the Site Deployment API. Site Stager can be used to generate a static image of an ASP-based MCMS website (but does not work with ASP.NET-based MCMS sites).

The following diagram shows the architecture and how the components connect with each other. The subsections that follow briefly describe what each module does.