Chapter 1 gives us an introduction to OpenCms, its features, and its history. Chapter 2 walks us through the process of installing and configuring OpenCms. We look at installing OpenCms with its setup wizard, securing and troubleshooting the installation, and configuring the client.

Chapter 3 explores the OpenCms Workplace; this is the primary interface for managing the contents of your OpenCms repository, and includes tools for editing, project management, workflow, publishing, and server administration. In this chapter, we cover various aspects of working in the OpenCms Workplace, including managing projects, using modules, permissions, editing and publishing documents, creating new pages, and customizing the Workplace.

In Chapter 4 we turn our attention to customizing the site. We look at developing the look and feel of published content, adding dynamic elements, and controlling resources. This includes topics such as working with templates, using OpenCms JSP tag libraries, creating JSP scriptlets, and managing FlexCache directives.

Chapter 5 takes us into the heart of OpenCms, looking at the mechanisms that drive the content management system. We look at resource types, content definitions, the Virtual File System (VFS), and the class structure of OpenCms.

In Chapter 6 we look at OpenCms modules; these provide a mechanism for extending the functionality of OpenCms. Modules are designed to be easily distributed among OpenCms installations, and can provide functional elements ranging from portable content to sophisticated applications that interact with content in OpenCms. We take an in-depth look at developing modules, covering topics such as creating a module, adding templates, content, and JSP pages to the module, adding custom Java classes and libraries, and exporting and deploying your module.

Chapter 7 tackles some advanced features of the OpenCms module mechanism. We cover creating an administration point for a module, using JSPs to produce administration screens, and creating a custom launcher class.

In Chapter 8 we return to the administrative aspect of managing OpenCms, and examine the issues surrounding the deployment of an OpenCms solution. We cover static exports, user authentication and management, and other administrative tasks such as backup, recovery, and performance tuning.

There are two appendices that cover building OpenCms from its sourcecode, and installing, configuring, and using the OpenCms Lucene Module to improve the searching of your site.

To use this book, you will of course need OpenCms. This is freely downloadable from http://www.opencms.org/opencms/en/download/opencms.html.

OpenCms has its own requirements for installation: Java 2 SDK version 1.4 or higher, Apache Tomcat 4.x, and MySQL 3.23.x or higher.

You will find details of where to download these applications from in Chapter 2, but each is freely available.

A sound knowledge of Java, JSP, and XML will help you get the most out of this book.

In this book you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

There are three styles for code. Code words in text are shown as follows: "Rather than get the contents of myFile with the getContents() method, we construct a new CmsXmlControlFile object".

If we have a block of code, it will be set as follows:

CmsJspActionElement cms = new CmsJspActionElement( pageContext,
                                                   request, 
                                                   response );
String myFileName = "/playground/index.html";
CmsObject cmso = cms.getCmsObject();
CmsFile myFile = cmso.readFile( myFileName );

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines will be made bold:

CmsJspActionElement cms = new CmsJspActionElement( pageContext,
                                                   request, 
                                                   response );
String myFileName = "/playground/index.html";


CmsObject cmso = cms.getCmsObject();
CmsFile myFile = cmso.readFile( myFileName );

New terms and important words are introduced in a bold-type font. Words that you see on the screen—in menus or dialog boxes, for example—appear in the text as follows: "Clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen".

Any command-line input and output is written as follows:

mysql> create table books (name char(100), author char(50));
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.03 sec)

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