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Server Configuration

Server Configuration

Aug 11, 2023

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In the Server Configuration panel you can configure settings related to URL redirects, caching, and static content. The settings/commands described in this topic that have an effect on the performance of your XperienCentral website(s) are just a small subset of the complete set available in XperienCentral. See the Setup Tool for all of the other settings that you can configure for your installation. To reach the Server Configuration panel, navigate to Configuration > Server Configuration in the XperienCentral Workspace.

In This Topic

 

Redirects

Alias redirects route URL requests for nonexistent URLs to a valid target URL. The target URL for an alias redirect can be a page in the current channel(s) as well as an external URL. Redirects allow you to make available simple, easy to remember URLs to direct visitors to pages on your website in cases where your tree structure is complicated or the target URL contains a difficult to remember path structure. URL aliases can only be a single identifier that contains no hierarchical structure. The address of the alias URL is relative to the root URL of your website. For the website www.gxsoftware.com,, for example, any alias URL you create can only be reached in a browser via a URL that adds the identifier to the root address, www.gxsoftware.com/<alias> for example, where <alias> is an identifier such as "Products", "Services", "Developer Support" and so forth.

The validity of the string that forms the identifier is dependent on the operating system on which XperienCentral is running. When an alias redirect is created, a new directory is created on the file system of the server in this location: <xperiencentral-root>\webmanager-webapps\webmanager-static-webapp\target\webmanager-static-webapp-xx, where "xx" is the version of XperienCentral you are running. The name of the directory matches the name of the alias that you create. For example, if you create an alias URL named "Products", then you would see the following folder created in the path listed above:

 



The name of the alias URL you create must be a valid directory or folder name for the operating system in which XperienCentral is running.

To create an alias redirect, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to Configuration > Server Configuration.

  2. Click [Redirects].





  3. Click [Add Redirect]. The "Add Redirect" section appears.




  4. In the "Name" field enter the internal name of the alias. This name is descriptive and only used to identify the alias URL in XperienCentral.

  5. In the "Alias URL" field, enter the string for the alias. The alias can include spaces but no special characters. The string can't include an extension such as .htm or .html and can be just the alias string or the string preceded by a forward slash (/home for example).

  6. To select a page in the current channel, click [Choose URL]. The Advanced Search dialog box appears. For example:





  7. Select the page to assign as the target URL and then click [Select].

  8. To assign an external address as the target URL, enter the fully qualified address in the "Target URL" field.

  9. Set the frameset option. Selecting "Yes" means that the alias URL will appear in the browser's address bar. Selecting "No" means that the target URL will not appear in the browser's address bar. For example:



  10. Click [Apply]. The redirect is added.

  11. Click [Dump now] to complete the operation. For example:



  12. Click [Apply]. The alias redirect is added to the list.

Deleting a Redirect

To delete a redirect, follow these steps:

  1. Select the checkbox to the left of the redirect that you want to delete.

  2. Click [Delete]:




    The redirect is deleted.

 

 

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Dumped Content

In XperienCentral, you can save static versions of dynamic web pages to disk in a process known as "dumping". When you dump a page, a static HTML file containing the page's contents is created. There is a speed advantage for pages that have been dumped because XperienCentral does not have to generate the content for a page when it is requested. You can set how often a static variant of a page is saved to disk (for instance, once every two minutes). Often the home page of a website is dumped because it is the most visited page and therefore has the highest number of requests. Pages that have been dumped with the extension ".html" are processed by the Apache web server:

The extension given to the dumped HTML file should be different from the extension of the friendly URLs. Apache determines, based on a fixed pattern in the URL, where the page data should come from. By default, Apache transfers those URLs beginning with /web/ or ending with ".htm" directly to XperienCentral's Tomcat or JBoss server. All other URLs are processed by Apache.

 

For performance reasons, XperienCentral will always use the static variant of a page if one exists. For example, a page with the title "Economy" has the corresponding friendly "Economy.htm" URL and is also dumped to "Economy.html". When "Economy" is requested, XperienCentral will refer to "Economy.html" because it can be loaded faster. Requests to "Economy.htm" will also work but the response could be somewhat slower because the web server has to generate the page.

Dumping Pages to Static HTML Files

To dump a dynamic page in XperienCentral to a static HTML file, follow these steps: