Deploying Contribute to a staging server and a live server

Many organizations use a staging web server with their production web server. A staging server lets you create websites on a non-production web server, so you can generate and test content without making it live on your organization’s public website. The use of a staging server also lets you maintain an automatic backup copy of all your website content.

In regard to Contribute, the use of a staging server lets you copy only folders and files that you specify as necessary for your website. This enables you to use Contribute to update web content on the staging server, but only publish the necessary web pages to your production web server for public access.

By configuring Contribute to work with content on your staging server, you can provide an extra measure of security by not copying Contribute’s administrative files and folders to your production server. This also lets you eliminate the presence of unnecessary files from a server with public access.

To use Contribute with a staging server, you create a connection to the staging server’s website. Users can update content on the staging server. Any temporary drafts that are created during the review process, or drafts of files that are in the process of being updated, but not yet published to the website, remain on the staging server, protected by your network’s firewall.

When using a staging server, configure the software you use to copy web pages and related files from the staging to the production server to not copy the following folders and the files they contain:

_mm

Contains Contribute administrative files and the messaging folders used to notify users when they have a draft that requires their attention.

_baks

Archives rollback copies of files.

_notes

Contains design notes. These files record information about who last published a given page, and other information.

MMWIP

Contains drafts of pages that have been sent for review but have not yet been published to the site.

Keeping these folders, and the files that Contribute stores inside them, off your production website provides an additional level of security. Although every effort has been made to make these folders and their files secure, the best security measure is to keep them on a server protected by your network’s firewall. In addition, consider using access control lists (ACLs) to secure these folders further by restricting access to network addresses in your organization’s network.