Clone Site = Layer List & Map Service Injection
I am building out a solution with multple sites and viewers in GE 4.2.1. My goal is to make one large site (let's call it the "Master Site") with all my layers configured the way I want them. The theory is I can then copy that Master Site and make a new one quickly by removing the respective services and layers I don't want for my users. Sure I understand there are layer themes, and that sounds like on the surface it would me my needs. However for the sake of this post let's assume that doesn't meet our needs.
With this in mind what I have noticed is that if I add Map Service(s) to my "Master Site" it pushes the new map service into my "cloned" sites. Is this suppose to happen?
From a troubleshooting perspective I have the "Master Site" open in one browser tab and the one I am cloning and adjusting open in another tab. Could this by why it is "pushing" the new map layers and if so is that an intended feature (b/c it shouldn't be). Also sometimes when I go to save the site I get an error and the site refreshes my layer configuration back to default.
Another note: I have to do this style site build out for a few reasons I won't go into, but one of those reasons is that when you clone a site the viewers get cloned too which is great, BUT you cannot rename the viewer which is silly. I then have to delete the viewer and build it out again with the name I want. This has to be done so I can properly configure my launch screen and better improve the user experience. Does anyone have any thoughts on this viewer cloning workflow? As well as this site cloning workflow? Could there be a few files "sticking"/"colliding" from all this cloning?
-
So this "Injection" is very frustrating as I configured one site and it would alter my close. I found this article about configuring the site.xml which is located at "C:\Program Files (x86)\Latitude Geographics\Geocortex Essentials\Default\REST Elements\Sites\SITENAME\Site.xml"
https://support.geocortex.com/copy-a-rest-site-in-essentials-34
Does anyone have experience editing this site.xml file? I have found a few places where the Site that is injecting things appears in the new site. I am nervous to mess with this however.
0 -
Hi Dylan,
There's some terminology here that I'm not familiar with, so hopefully we can clear that up.
When you "clone" a site, it sounds to me like you are actually adding a reference to your Master Site. When you add a reference to another site, the other site's layers are now accessible from your site. You can then remove some of the layers from the other site, but if the other site has layers added to it, you will automatically get those since it is a reference.
If you do NOT want changes to the Master Site to automatically appear in other sites, don't use a site reference - instead, make a copy of the site using the Copy button from the front page of Rest Manager. Then, instead of referencing the site, your new site will just have all the same things at the time you made the copy.
Viewers are an anomaly when you copy or reference a site. When you reference a site, the viewer in the referenced site still belongs to that site. When you delete the referenced viewer from the referenced site, you just stop referencing it (it stays in the parent site). When you copy a site, you get a copy of the viewer as well - the copied viewer belongs to the copied site.
The KB article for Essentials 3.4 is quite old and I would not recommend manually editing the Site.xml, since if you make a tiny error in the XML you can stop the whole thing from loading. As of Essentials 3.11, copying a site does not require you to manually update the viewer ID.
Regards,
-Malcolm
0 -
Malcolm this makes total sense now! It make sense that I was only seeing the issue when I did "Add New Site" then chose to reference a site. I was not seeing the issue when as you mentioned just hitting the copy button. I new something was different when I explored the site.xml and saw all the "merge" references in the one site and didn't see them in the other.
From the viewer perspective I found copying the viewer at "C:\Program Files (x86)\Latitude Geographics\Geocortex Essentials\Default\REST Elements\Sites\SITENAME\Viewers\VIEWERNAME\VirtualDirectory\Config\Viewer.xml" has been a good way to quickly move my custom toolbars and default setting I like over to the new viewers, so that helps work around the tedious process of building out my custom toolbars and forgetting to "check a box".
0
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
3 comments