Configuring the Website Context

The Context URL property is used by the asset Viewer to preview an asset in its intended context. This context might be an HTML rendering, for example in an online help system or a Website; or it might be a PDF rendering. WorldServer can also be configured to render your Web page files in their Website context by mapping the asset to the actual location from which the Web server renders them.

For a site or application that is composed of static pages (for example, HTML), the feature often can be enabled by configuring a few settings:
  1. Identify the Web server and the port that the Web server is listening on that will be used to display the content being localized. For example, server g11n.mycompany.com on port 80.
  2. Either map the Web server's document root or create a virtual directory with a document root that contains all of the files that you want to preview. For example, the URL http://g11n.mycompany.com/preview is mapped to the directory c:\content.
  3. Set the Context URL property for the appropriate folder in WorldServer in Management > Asset Interface System > View and Change Properties. For example, if c:\content is mounted as /content in WorldServer, set the Context URL property of /content to http://g11n.mycompany.com/preview.
Now when files are viewed in the Viewer, they will be rendered by the Web server like they would on the production Web site. WorldServer is simply redirecting to the Web server in this case; no special processing of the files is done.

A more complicated example might be for a dynamic site in which content is stored in a database and rendered dynamically as HTML by templates such as Java Server Pages, Active Server Pages, or CGI scripts. To enable Preview, a systematic way of mapping of content to the URLs that will invoke the templates to render the content must be established. SDL Professional Services has experience providing solutions for customers facing this type of challenge with a variety of architectures including leading content management systems, application servers, portals, and personalization engines.