Take Another Look at the Sites Model

By Chris Armistead

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 at 2:30pm

Since our recent webinar where Services Trainer Ross Williams demonstrated a live migration from the Global Area to Sites in Cascade Server, I have had the privilege of speaking to many customers who have expressed their new-found comfort in performing such a migration themselves.  However, many of these same customers told me they needed a refresher in the benefits of migrating to Sites. 

Administrators and end-users alike will enjoy several features introduced by the Sites model.  The ability to assign Roles to users in particular Sites - for example, giving publishing abilities to a user in one Site but not in another - allows for a user's abilities to be expanded in certain areas and restricted in others.  This feature empowers end-users by expanding certain abilities, while simultaneously helping reduce administrator overhead. 

Another major benefit of Sites is the elimination of Targets, which leads to a more simplified publishing process.  In the Global Area, determining where a Page gets published means walking through the following steps: Page => Content Type => Configuration Set => Configuration => Template => Target => Destination => Transport.  After the move to Sites, determining where a Page gets published requires only these steps: Page => Site => Destination => Transport. 

Cross-Site Template sharing is yet another noteworthy feature of Sites.  Because a Template is no longer tied to a Target, a Template can be used anywhere in the system.  In short, this feature represents a true global Template that can be used across all sites. 

Additionally, migrating to Sites gives users the opportunity to take advantage of Connectors which link Cascade Server to a growing number of best-of-breed third party applications.  The first of these Connectors are the Twitter and Wordpress Connectors, which have already been the subject of much discussion amongst Cascade users. 

With the addition of copying and moving assets right around the bend in Cascade Server 6.7, we encourage you to look into the benefits of Sites once again if you have not migrated already.  The Cascade Server 6.0 Release Notes, 6.2 Release Notes, and 6.4 Release Notes are a great place to start refreshing yourself on all of the great benefits of migrating to Sites.

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