Destination
Digest
A destination represents a location to which a target can be published, allows for publishing content on a schedule, and specifies encoding (UTF-8 or ASCII) for the published content.
Destinations allow the use of the same transport across multiple targets. The destination points the assets, which are associated with its target, to a particular location that is defined by a transport. Targets can contain multiple destinations and templates.
Concept
Destinations are useful for controlling individual sites that may need different settings, or that publish on different schedules using different locations (represented by transports). Each destination has a transport that represents a server where the published content will reside. Destinations have access rights restrictions that are dictated by group membership.
When publishing a target, Cascade Server allows the selection of the individual destinations that are associated with that target. This is generally used when content is to be published to a development or internal server for final quality assurance before being pushed to a live site.
A target contains a collection of one or many destinations; these destinations define the locations where the target can publish to. The location is defined by the transport associated with the destinations, and the transport represents a server location.The directory that is specified in the destination will override the directory specified in the transport that the destination uses.
Technical
Creating a Destination
To create a Destination:
- Select ‘Administration’ from the top navigation menu.
- Select ‘Targets & Destinations’ in the left navigation pane.
- Select the target to which a destination will be added.
- Click ‘New Destination’.
- Complete the following fields in the ‘General’ tab:
- Name – How the system identifies the destination.
- Directory – Generally, this value is inherited from the transport. An absolute path may be entered here if content needs to be directed to a different folder than the one identified in the transport.
- Transport – Use browse icon to select desired transport.
- Target – Use browse icon to select desired target.
- Activation – Allows users to temporarily deactivate certain destinations without having to delete and recreate them later.
- Output – Cascade Server publishes content in Unicode by default; this may be overridden by selecting the ASCII checkbox.
- Schedule Publishing - Allows content to be automatically published on a recurring schedule. By setting up different destinations, users may set certain portions of a site to publish on different schedules.
- Applicable for Groups – Determines which groups may publish to the destination. Unless a group is defined here, this destination will not show up on an asset's list of available destinations on the publish screen for that group.
- Click Submit to save the new destination.
When publishing content, destinations may be checked or unchecked to allow users added flexibility in regards to where to publish content on an ad hoc basis.
Destination Diagnostic Utility
This utility serves to allow managers and administrators the ability to test destination connectivity and destination transfer rates without the need to invoke a publish.
Under Targets & Destinations in the administration area, once a Destination has been selected, a new option will appear on the left hand side: “Test Destination.”
To run the Destination Diagnostic Utility:
- Select the destination you wish to test.
- Click Test Destination.
- On the resulting screen, you can specify the parameters of the test. A destination test includes two basic sub-tests:
- The Destination Connectivity test is always performed, regardless of the above settings. For example, when testing a destination that uses an FTP transport, the Destination Connectivity test will ensure that the CMS can connect to the FTP server.
- The Transfer Rate test is controlled using the test settings above. The Number of Files setting specifies how many test files will be sent to the destination. The Size of Files settings specifies how large those files should be. If a non-zero value for Number of Files is specified, after Cascade successfully connects to the destination, a number of files will be transmitted and deleted from the destination, measuring the average speed of transfer.
Note that when testing destinations on a local network, the network transfer speeds will sometime wildly fluctuate. When testing destinations over a WAN, speeds are somewhat more constrained within a particular range.
- The Destination Connectivity test is always performed, regardless of the above settings. For example, when testing a destination that uses an FTP transport, the Destination Connectivity test will ensure that the CMS can connect to the FTP server.
- Click ‘Submit’ to execute the connectivity test.
If there are no errors, the screen will indicate "Test Successful!" It will also show how many files were written, and what the Average, Minimum, and Maximum Speeds were.
If errors are found, the screen will identify the problem that occurred.