Alfresco Dynamic Website
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[edit] About Alfresco Dynamic Website
Alfresco Dynamic Website is a soon to be released Alfresco Community Project that provides a robust, enterprise-class web site assembly framework that aims to go above and beyond the solutions offered by proprietary companies. Alfresco Dynamic Website sits on top of Alfresco Web Content Management and provisions the full breadth of Alfresco capabilities to your web site.
With Alfresco Dynamic Website, web experience managers can easily:
- Enable their business users to manage their web sites without IT intervention.
- Drag and drop articles, press releases, videos, and audio onto pages within their web site.
- Point and click to rapidly assemble new experiences within their web site, ensuring content is delivered to exactly the right people in the right way
- Instantly preview all of their changes while leveraging Alfresco's innovative virtualization server technology.
- Manage the presentation and deployment of all electronic assets in the business.
As a community project, Alfresco Dynamic Website leverages the insight and best practices derived from a broad community. The Alfresco Dynamic Website platform combines expertise and best practices learned from employees and community members with deep technical expertise in the legacy architectures of Interwoven, Vignette, and Documentum.
Alfresco Dynamic Website combines the best parts of these proprietary frameworks and brings them into the present day with a focus on mashup application development (based around technologies like AJAX, ExtJS, YUI and a diversity of REST services, including Google Gadgets).
[edit] News
- Alfresco Dynamic Website (ADW) Announced: We've announced the impending release of ADW to the Alfresco community. We'll post updates to this page as the release date approaches.
[edit] Support Disclaimer
As a forge project, direct support for the Alfresco Dynamic Website framework is provided by the community. There is no cost for this framework. Alfresco Dynamic Website is not included in the standard Alfresco Enterprise support contract. It is free to use and is distributed and licensed under the GPL.
Alfresco Dynamic Website requires Alfresco Community 2.9 or greater.
[edit] What is Alfresco Dynamic Website?
The distribution of Alfresco Dynamic Website is entirely via an AMP file. Everything you need is included in this AMP and installing it is a single-step process.
For access to the download as well as installation instructions on how to install Alfresco Dynamic Website, refer to the Alfresco Dynamic Website Installation document.
Once you've installed the AMP, your Alfresco instance will have the following:
[edit] New Web Forms
A collection of 14 new web forms for managing all your web applications state, component associations, page, template, and navigation structure.
[edit] New Web Scripts
A wide array of new web scripts that form the basis for in-context web site building via Alfresco's Web Script REST services.
[edit] New Web Project (ADW)
A single Alfresco Web Content Management (WCM) web project that you can use out-of-the-box or further extend using the Alfresco templating or transparent layering capabilities.
[edit] Getting Started on your Web Site
You can get started right away with the sample web project. Just navigate into the ADW Web Project (seen above) and click on the "Preview" icon for your user's sandbox.
Alfresco automatically launches your web site within the Alfresco Virtual Server. This Virtual Server will let you instantly begin working on your site, entirely within your own sandbox. You can build pages, rewrite content, and generally tear things up without affecting any other users on the system!
You are now greeted with the first of many Alfresco Dynamic Website wizards. This one will let you name your website and pick from a set of "getting started" sites.
And VOILA!!! That is all. You are now ready to have some fun!
[edit] Building your Web Site
Once the wizard completes, you'll be able to navigate around your fully functional web site. In the screenshots shown here, we've picked a Public Web Site. But you may also decide to build a Project Workspace or an Intranet.
Each type of site serves a different audience and has different functionality. But we've taken care of that. The Alfresco Dynamic Website framework is robust enough to handle page construction and request servicing for all of these! In fact, you are encouraged to mix and match functionality into your web site as you see fit.
It's now time to get started building your web site. Click the "Start Editing" link on the little floating menu in the lower left hand corner.
You should now see the in-context editing controls snap into place. They're basically a set of user friendly, rich functions that let your business users go to town on your web site.
Using these in-context controls, users can not only do the simple stuff like edit content, articles and the like, but they can also:
- Introduce completely new sections of the web site by maintaining full control over the full arrangement of the page, the components, the graphics and the content!
- Launch and participate in workflows with other members of the business community. Divy up tasks among team members responsible for development and publication of the web site.
- Snap collaboration content and components directly into the web site, straight from your corporate Alfresco enterprise repository. Drag in calendars, document folders, image galleries, tasks, reports and any kind of Alfresco content right into your web page.
- Drag and drop images, videos, audio files and a wide diversity of file types into the page and watch as it automatically configures "slots" and regions for rendition.
- Build a scalable web site that leverages the very best in technical approach that delivers page, template and site scoped components. Allow your teams to resize page regions, redefine layouts and build exactly what they need to build... without any IT intervention.
[edit] Tutorials
That's just getting started. If you would like to watch tutorials on Alfresco Dynamic Website, please visit our Alfresco Dynamic Website - Tutorials page. We're presently in the process of updating these tutorials.
If, after reviewing these tutorials, you decide that you would like to check out Alfresco Dynamic Website for yourself, please feel free to visit our Alfresco Dynamic Website Installation page. There, you can grab the AMP files and get started!
[edit] Feedback and Contributions
As a community project, we've been fortunate to have Alfresco Dynamic Website bring together the perspectives and collective wisdom of a wide array of talented engineers and developers who've been working in this field for many, many years. We believe that Alfresco Dynamic Website offers a very exciting future, one that far exceeds the offerings of legacy Content Management companies. We'd love to have you join in the process!
If you have any feedback or if you would like to submit a bug fix or offer assistance, please contact us via the Alfresco Forums!
[edit] FAQ
The Alfresco Dynamic Website FAQ compiles some additional information about ADW.
