Performing an action can be dangerous if you don't actually know what the results of that action will be. This applies to website publishing, much as it does in real life.
When you publish a page in RedDot, you are given three options:
- Publish just that page
- Publish that page and 'related' pages
- Publish that page and 'following' pages
To understand what will happen, you need at least two types of knowledge:
- An exact understanding of what the concepts 'related' and 'following' mean
- An understanding of exactly which pages are contained within the relevant set
The first is tricky, partly because the two concepts are not embedded within the general structure and use of the CMS. There are many levels of indirection involved, and neither concept - in particular, 'following' - really has a direct equivalent in a standard HTML structure.
The second involves either a deep knowledge and familiarity with these concepts, or a great deal of manual inspection. Or trial and error.
Furthermore, the concept of a 'page' needs to be borne in mind, particularly when a 'page' is, in fact, a component that might belong on many pages. Even publishing 'just a page' may result in publishing hundreds of actual pages, if that page is, for example, a footer. That's a vitally useful operation to have at your disposal, but it's confused by the notion of 'related' pages.
Add in publication packages, and project variants, and there results a huge number of factors in determining exactly what will happen when a page is published, an operation which is one of the most basic, and fundamental there can be.
2 comments:
You forgot to mention keywords as another big complexity adder. Never forget to enforce "hands off" while a publishing job is underway - thats the point.
I believe, if you really know your project, you will know what you publish when you do so. If your project structure is weired or unappropriate then you find yourself just in the middle of this "unknown" that's true. Maybe the biggest problem of RedDot CMS is that it proposes simplicity for people who do not understand that their job is complex.
Publishing is extremely trickey especially with larger sites.
1. There's no actual counter built into publication logs that tell you how many pages were publishing in a job.
2. There are no debugging tools that lets you trace where or why publishing broke down. Often I expect a page to be published from workflow and if it doesn't come out there's no real way to debug why. You just have to run through a series of checks and testing until you figure it out. This becomes a problem when new Red Dot developers join your team.
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