Development Process

Developing Escenic templates involves editing various JSP and XML files in different locations, creating WAR archive files, uploading them to your application server, using various Escenic applications to modify settings, restarting the web application periodically and viewing the pages generated by your templates.

You will find it a lot easier to learn the details of template development if you have a clear understanding of this cycle from the very beginning.

There are two main components you have to deal with when developing your templates:

The application server

The application server is responsible for displaying your publication. You will not see the results of any changes made to the appearance of your publication unless you update the application server's copy of your publication. This process of copying an updated version of your publication to the server is called deployment.

The Content Engine

The Content Engine is responsible for managing the structure of your publication, and the editing environments presented to editorial staff in Content Studio. Any changes made to the structure of your publication (such as adding a new field to an article, modifying a field creating a new content type or template) will not take effect or become visible in Content Studio until you upload your changes to the Content Engine and update the publication.

The following sections describe the procedures to follow in various cases.