Core Content Only

One of the easiest ways to see what might be going wrong, or right, in Content Server is the use of trace sections on the System Audit page. Trace sections allow you a great variety of control over what kind of information shows up in the server output.

See this former blog entry for more detailed information about tracing:

Content Server Tracing and Creating Your Own Custom Trace Sections

Refreshing the Server Output to show you what is going on can get annoying though. If you add this entry to General Configuration or config.cfg and restart you can get server output to be written to disk:

UseRedirectedOutput=true

To find the log on the disk look under the directory that is appropriate for your Operating System.

Windows: <install dir>/bin/IdcServerNT.log

Linux: <install dir>/etc/log

Now that you have found the log, it would be easier to keep an eye on what’s going on by using something like the tail command in Linux/UNIX. The tail command, with the -f switch will continuously show the data being added to the log file. In Linux you simply use this command:

tail -f /etc/log

There are several applications available that add similar functionality for windows:

http://tailforwin32.sourceforge.net/
http://www.baremetalsoft.com/baretail/index.php
http://www.withdata.com/tail4win.html

When contributing various assets in Site Studio Designer the Assign Info form will be presented. By default, the buttons to commit are at the bottom of the screen. This is not such an issue the first time I save/commit the content. However, as I continue editing/saving the content I get annoyed by the fact that I have to scroll to the bottom of the page and click Assign Info each time.

I have finally broke down and created a new component that adds the Assign Info button to the top of the page as well.

Download the Sample Assign Info Buttons at Top Component.

I have updated the Alphabetize Menus component to Build #2 by adding some minor functionality (thanks for the suggestion Mark) to allow you to enable and disable the functionality through Admin Server without restarting Content Server.

The ability to change flags, settings, etc., without restarting Content Server is accomplished using something known as preference variables. In this case, I have added a preference variable named EnableMenuSorting. When set to true (the default) the menus are sorted. When set to false the menus assemble themselves in their natural order.

Download the Sample Alphabetize Menus Component Build #2.

In my Oracle OpenWorld 2009 demo I showed how to link to specific renditions from a WYSIWYG Element in the Site Studio 10gR4 Contributor Application. This post is about that topic and one of the components I demonstrated during that session.

Download the Sample Link to Renditions Component now.

You may also want to check out the other related posts and free components: Web URL Map Extras and Web and Web Sites Menu Filtering.

This particular component is very simple. We accomplish this by overriding two Dynamic HTML includes named ss_compute_doc_url and rendition_info_select_form. Crack the component open to see more specifics.

Once this component is installed (either via Component Manager in the Admin Server or Component Wizard) the select buttons next to each rendition in the Renditions page will insert the correct rendition into the contributor element.

Disclaimer: Accessing renditions may pull the file from a zip file. To learn more about how renditions are stored and the performance implications of this kind of flexibility please contact your favorite Oracle UCM/WCM/URM/DAM partner. Solutions do exist, and they can guide you through the pitfalls.

Grab the Web URL Map Extras Component.

In my Oracle OpenWorld 2009 demo I showed how to use the Web URL Map feature of Content Server to make images and renditions easier to use in Cascading Style Sheets. This post is about that topic and one of the components I demonstrated during that session.

One way to make referencing images (and especially renditions) in Cascading Style Sheets and other places in your web sites is to use the Web URL Mapping tool that comes with Content Server. Check out Kyle's blog, he has a whole post about this feature.

I have several of these mappings that I always like to add to a server. So, I made a component that will add these mappings to the server when you install the component. Also, I wanted an example component showing how you can read from a defined map and add it to another map. Hence, the WebMapUrlExtras component was born and is available here.

WebMapUrlExtras adds the following four mappings.

w/
pass in a dDocName and get back the web rendition of an image

n/
pass in a dDocName and get back the native file

qs/
pass in a query string and get back the quick search results

r/
pass in a dDocName and get back the web rendition, or you can optionally specify the rendition by tagging on a ?Rendtion=<rendition name>

Prior to the component your Web Map URL configuration might look like this:

After installing the component and restarting it should look similar to this: