The Concept of Instances

To understand how Magnolia has to be setup, it is important to understand the concept of instances.

As you may have heard or read, you need to run a so called "Author" and a "Public" instance. Understanding why there are two or more instances helps you understand the "Activation process" a lot better.

1. Why two Instances?

There are three major reasons, why Magnolia usually uses two different instances:

  1. Separate development from production
  2. Security: Keep the development instance behind the Firewall, while production can be in the DMZ
  3. Performance: The Public instance has no Authoring environment and other performance related overhead
Therefore each Magnolia instance is a Web application (has it's own .war file) and can be dropped into the Web server's /webapp folder easily.

2. What is Activation?

Knowing now that you develop and add content in the "Author" instance and the Internet world enjoys your "hors-d'oeuvre" coming from the public instance, you have to think about some little things.

No, you do not have to write TWO different scripts (one for each instance).

Yes, you have to make sure that your scripts and content are "pushed" over to the "Public" instance.

Once you have developed your Web application and Authors have added the according content, you have to make the result visible to the Public. That's where the so called "Activation process" comes in.

"Activation" means that you "copy" content from one repository to the other. That's all.So you don't have to worry about the repositories and protocols.

But since your scripts are NOT in the repository, you will have to copy them manually to the Public instance.

Remember: Your scripts are used to create the response to the browser, so your scripts have to be in each instance you plan to use.

Please read 'Activation - Subscribers' carefully. It's full of interesting information around "Activation".