Live View
Digest
Concept
While the Layout and the Preview panes display the Page rendered by Cascade Server, the Live pane displays the Page retrieved from the web server to which the Page is published. The pane also shows the URL the Page is retrieved from. This URL is built by concatenating the Site URL, the selected Page's path and the selected Configuration's extension. For example, if the current Site URL is "http://example.com", the selected Page's path is "/news/index" and the selected Configuration's extension is ".html"; then the resulting URL of the Live pane would be: "http://example.com/news/index.html".
The Live pane is very useful because it is an easy way to check:
- If the Page was published successfully. It is a more reliable way of making sure the Page was published than viewing a publish report.
- If it was published to the correct location. This is assuming that the Site URL is correct.
- If the cross site links pointing to this page will be correctly rewritten. The exact same URL will be used if a Page from another Site points to the current Page. Therefore, if the Page is published but does not render inside of the Live pane, it means that cross site links pointing to this page will not work either.
- How the Page looks when retrieved from the server. You can make sure that all the images and CSS and JavaScript files were published correctly by quickly examining the Page in the Live pane.
- If the links in the Page were correctly rewritten during publishing. In some cases clicking on the links inside of the Page's Live pane is a more reliable way of making sure they are not broken than viewing a publish report.
- If [ system-view:internal ] and [ system-view:external ] tags work correctly. Content inside of [ system-view:internal ] tags should be rendered in Layout and Preview panes while content inside of [ system-view:external ] tag should be rendered in Live pane.
- If server side scripting executes correctly. This is only in regards to Pages that render server side code, like PHP, ASP etc. While the Layout and Preview panes should display the code itself, the Live pane should display a result of execution of that code.
Technical
If you cannot see the content in the Live pane, first confirm that the Page was published. If the Page was published, here are possible reasons why the Page is not displaying:
- The selected Configuration is not publishable or was not published in the past. The "Publishable" property can be toggled inside of the Configuration Set the Page uses. Confirm that the selected Configuration has been published.
- The Page has been moved or renamed inside Cascade Server. If this is the case, the Page needs to be published again to the new location.
- The Site URL is incorrect. The Site property can be updated inside of Site Management area.
- The Page publishes to a Database Transport only. If a Page publishes to a Database Transport only, it is likely the Page's content is used in a server-side application with a different URL. If this is the case, the URL generated inside of the Live pane will be invalid.
- The Page has been published to a location you do not have access to. Verify with your network administrator or the web server administrator that you have access to the published location. The Page can be blocked from the web server's side or by a firewall.
- If using Internet Explorer, update your security settings. The default security settings do not allow web pages from one domain (for example "http://yourcascadeserver.com" to include web pages from another domain (for example "http://yourwebserver.com"). To update the security settings, go to "Tools" menu and then "Internet Options". A window will open. In "Security" tab click "Custom level..." button and scroll down to "Miscellaneous" and hit "Enable" radio button for "Access data sources across domains".