Synchronizing content on multiple servers

If you have more than one server hosting the same website, take steps to synchronize all servers that host the website. The following are issues to address:

  • Theme files – If you modify the website’s CSS or master page, or if you apply a different theme, copy the changed files to all other servers.
  • Uploaded images – Copy your folder for uploaded images to all other servers, either by direct FTP or by file copy.

    • Note: This is not necessary for ContentFile Content Item attached files, which are automatically copied to remote servers when published.

  • Hard-coded image paths – If you use different virtual directories on any of your servers, you need to put a variable in any hard-coded image paths to make them publish correctly on all servers. When including images in Content Html, modify the default Image URL and replace the server name and virtual directory with [Root]. For example, if the Image URL is …/iMIS/images/mypic.jpg, change it to [Root]/images/mypic.jpg.

    • Note: When you edit Content Html, the image appears as a missing-image red X, but it displays correctly when published.

  • Navigation area properties – If you modify navigation area properties (using the Easy Edit link in the Navigation Areas section of the Website Edit screen) you might need to reset the server’s worker process to get it to pick up the changes.
  • Publishing servers – When publishing content, iMIS will not consider the content successfully published until all relevant publishing servers have finished publishing it without error. That means that if one of the publishing services corresponding to any of the publishing servers listed in RiSE > Maintenance > Publishing servers is stopped or otherwise inactive, content records will remain in the PublishPending state until the publishing service is started or the entry in Publishing servers is removed and the content is republished.

    • Note: Images used in content records such as Content HTML, are automatically regenerated into the /images folder on all web servers when published.