REASONS

General

  1. In real world one makes one webapp for each website. In real life you manage one website with a one CMS webapp, not many sites with one CMS. I know Lenya was originaly designed with large multi-publication university site-farms in mind, but that seems not to be a common case.

2. Because of 1. you probably don't need multi-publication features, do you?

Urls

3. Stripping URLs, mod_rewriting, link rewriting, etc - all methods used to cheat browser about real (real in cocoon sense of course) position is not a good idea. It forces publisher to deploy other software (ie front end httpd server). Also, when fall-back mechanizm is used - it simply does not work, as fall-back url's are higher in directory structure. (Example: if you publish /default/live/ at / - and invoke unexistent document-url - default Lenya box uses /lenya/resources which are out of /default/live structure.

When not using any front-end software, you are forced to publish site with /publication-id/live/ prefix in every URL.

4. Prefix /publication-id in ULR (ie /default) is unwanted. At least because of a reason 2.

5. What about '/live' area prefix? Even if you succeed with stripping publication-id prefix - who on earth would like to publish his own site at internet address: http://www.somecompany.com/live/ ?

This is not the flexibiliby Cocoon/Lenya should give you..

Directory structure

6. Directory structure is also very strange... You've got at least three sets of content / resource / xslt areas:

   at lenya/                 (for fall-back) (which doesn't work when #3)\\
   at pubs/publication/      ("local")\\
   at pubs/publication/lenya (for over-write)\\

7. Having in mind #1 and #2, xslt designers, graphic desingers have to go through deep directory structure to get into their files. 'lenya/pubs/publicatoin-id/resources/shared..' is a bit long (wink)

GOALS and IDEAS

General

  1. Simplify Lenya

2. At least make one publication to be a "null, empty name", or - even make publication-id irrelevant

Urls

  1. Make live accessible at / , not at /default/live/

2. Perhaps set some request uri to access "backend", for example /lenya/.
How could it work:

   http://localhost:8080/webapp/    <---- Publication (default, one and only), Live area

   http://localhost:8080/webapp/lenya/                 <-- backend entry point
   http://localhost:8080/webapp/lenya/admin/           <-- admin menu
   http://localhost:8080/webapp/lenya/info-authoring/  <-- info-authoring menu
   http://localhost:8080/webapp/lenya/authoring/       <-- authoring area
   http://localhost:8080/webapp/lenya/live/            <-- live area (the same as at '/')

Directory structure

3. Site files shouldn't be inside Lenya "system files".. What about this way:

webapp/legal
webapp/WEB-INF

webapp/content/         <-- publication content directory (*)
webapp/resources/       <-- publication resources directory (*)
webapp/xslt/            <-- publication xsl stylesheets (*)

webapp/lenya/
             bin/       <-- files of current lenya/bin/
             config/    <-- files of current lenya/config/ AND "pubs/default/config/* also
             content/   <-- files of current lenya/content/
             resources/ <-- files of current lenya/resources/
             xslt/      <-- files of current lenya/xslt/
             logs/      <-- current "pubs/default/logs/" dir
             work/      <-- current "pubs/default/work/" dir (scheduler, lucene, etc..)

* with override of and fallback to ../lenya/content/
                                   ../lenya/resources
                                   ../lenya/xslt        respectively

Probably achieved:

  • clear division between site files and Lenya CMS 'system' files
  • easy override and fallback engine:
  • if "*.ext" misses - it sould be found at "lenya/*.ext" match
  • if "*.ext" exists - it overides "lenya/*.ext"
  • you don't loose fallback resources when mod_proxing



WDYT?

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