Chapter 2. Editorial and Live Server

Red Hat Content Management System has two conceptually separate systems: the editorial system and the live system. The editorial server is a back-end server that CMS users access to manage content. The live server delivers content to end users (Web clients).

From a practical standpoint, the editorial server and live server require access to the same database instance, unless the publish-to-filesystem (p2fs) capability of the CMS is used. P2fs allows the usage of a live server which is a separate static web server that serves content straight from a file system. You can find more information on using p2fs in Section 6.4 Publish to Filesystem (p2fs) Configuration.

Editorial Server

The editorial server is accessible only to privileged users who contribute, edit, approve, or otherwise maintain content. An editorial server is specifically configured to model the content management processes of the organization.

Common configuration and development processes include creating and styling content types, developing authoring kits, and configuring workflows and lifecycles. Red Hat CMS is designed to be flexible and extensible to accomodate this type of configuration and development, and has defined APIs to isolate any organization-specific code from the main product.

Live Server

The live server needs to be accessible by any user who needs to view content. Since the content to be served is unique to an organization, the navigation and look-and-feel require configuration.