This chapter assists you to get an overview of editorial
actions which may harm the Multi-Site processing. It is recommended not
to perform these actions, as failures especially in deeply nested
site hierarchies may easily spread and expand.
While CoreMedia Multi-Site provides much automation to ease managing
localized contents, it sometimes cannot hide the complexity behind.
This complexity becomes obvious for example during unexpected editorial
actions, where the Multi-Site feature tries to solve conflicts,
but may do so with wrong assumptions.
General Multi-Site Content Integrity Note
CoreMedia Multi-Site expects no manual interaction between sites. If you stick
to this rule, you should have no problems using the Multi-Site feature. Most
problems arise when you do not use workflows to transfer contents from
one site to another.
Exceptions exist especially where Multi-Site does not yet provide support
or cannot provide assistance. Most prominent are:
propagation of deleted contents,
transfer contents between siblings sites, and
transfer content from derived to master sites.
General Multi-Site Fixes
Most issues with CoreMedia Multi-Site can be fixed by adjusting the localization
properties after unexpected actions such as copy and paste of contents
between sites. These are the expected states of the properties you should know:
Locale:
This is expected to have the same locale as the site the content
is in.
Master:
This is expected to be either empty, if it is a content independent
from the master site, or it should link to its variant in the master
site, so that it receives updates from the master site.
Master Version:
This is expected to contain any valid version number of the master.
A negative value indicates that the content has been derived from this (positive) master version but has
still to be translated. If the master link is empty, this version should be empty, too.
In rare cases, the field can obtain the value 0 (zero). This is not a real version and it indicates
that something went wrong. See Invalid Master Version
in Table 4.1, “List of Multi-Site Challenges” for details.
Lists possible symptoms, you may observe.
The symptoms are not necessarily complete, but are the most
prominent symptoms you may observe.
Causes
The possible causes for the observed symptoms. Again, there may
be additional or other causes, but the ones listed are those known
to occur sometimes.
Effects
Effects, if ignoring this possibly erroneous state. The severity of
these effects may be minimal, thus, ignoring a given state may
always be an option.
Fixes
How to resolve the issues. Sometimes, there are several approaches
which you may consider, depending on your perceived severity
of the issue.
Prevent
What is recommended to prevent such issues. Most of the time, it lists
best practices when dealing with multi-site content.
Validate Multisite
Most of the symptoms below can be monitored with the cm
tool validate-multisite, as described in
Section 3.13.1.11, “Validate Multi-Site” in Content Server Manual.
Cross-Site Links
Symptoms
Validation Issue:
Most likely you observed this issue when opening the affected
content in CoreMedia Studio. It will tell you about links which link
to other sites, ignoring the master link which is meant to link
to other sites.
Confused Site Visitors:
Your site visitors will experience switching between languages
accidentally just by navigating through your site.
Causes
Manually Copy Contents Between Sites:
Despite the most obvious reason, that you may have manually
added links from other sites, the more likely reason may be
copying contents between sites. If you do so, there is no
feature, which will map contained links, as it will be done
in translation and synchronization workflows. Thus, instead of
links pointing to the site you copied to, the links will still
refer to the source site you copied from.
Manually Copy Richtext Between Sites:
A similar, may be less obvious cause, is copying Richtext contents
from one site to another. They may contain embedded images as well
as internal links. On copy & paste these images/links will
still link to the originating site.
Effects
Workflows Not Updating Links:
From a translation or synchronization workflow perspective,
these links most likely will be considered as independent links
in a derived site, thus, as if they have been explicitly added
in the derived site. These links will never get updated by
translation or synchronization workflows, they may even cause
conflicts when trying to merge changes to the affected link
lists.
This very effect will only occur, if you have explicitly set a
master-link. Note, that in case of copy & paste master-links
and master-versions will be removed, if set.
Delivery Issues:
Depending on your delivery configuration, you may experience
either broken links or (more likely) your visitors stumbling
from one language to another without being aware of it.
Fixes
Remap Links Manually:
If recreating the content from master is not an option, you may
manually remap the links to link to the same contents in the
actual site. Note, that this applies to link lists, to
links and embedded images in CoreMedia Richtext just as links
set in Struct properties.
Prevent
Use Workflows:
Instead of manually copying contents from one site to another,
use workflows such as translation or synchronization workflow
(whichever applies). Workflows will take care of mapping the links
to the corresponding sibling in the target site. In addition to
that they will also create possibly missing link targets in
derived sites.
Remap Links Manually:
Just as stated above, if you copied contents or property
values such as CoreMedia Richtext from one site to another, you
have to manually remap the links accordingly. Note, that this
may not be feasible in CoreMedia Studio, as not necessarily all
links are accessible within CoreMedia Studio. If in doubt, please
ask your administrators to check the content.
Deleted Master
Symptoms
Validation Issue Deleted Master:
In CoreMedia Studio you will see an issue, that the master property
refers to a non-existing master.
Causes
Deleted Master:
Most likely, the master content got deleted. Unfortunately, there
is not yet a way to propagate deletion of contents from one site
to another. Thus, for a vivid site, it is very likely that you
will stumble across this issue.
Effects
No more updates:
The very content affected by deleted master will not receive
any updates anymore. Most likely, as soon as all referrers have
been updated, there will be no more content items linking to this
content, and thus, you will have some content in your site
unreachable by site visitors.
Despite this, the state is rather harmless and is similar to
a content intentionally just existing in a derived site, but not
in the master site.
Fixes
Delete Derived Content:
You may want to delete the derived content, just as the master
content got deleted. Prior to that, you may want to run a
translation or synchronization workflow for all contents linking
to this content, as it is expected that any links will be
automatically removed by this process.
Remove Master Link:
Of course, if you want to keep this content, you can simply remove
the master link. It is recommended to clear the master version
property as well.
Restore Master:
Always an option is to restore the master.
Prevent
As there is currently no way to propagate deletion of contents,
there is no way to prevent this state, other than establishing
a communication of site administrators of the master site to the
local site administrators.
Duplicated Content Items
Symptoms
Some Document (1):
In your derived site you may observe, that just next to your content
Some Document another content named
Some Document (1) exists.
Causes
Create With Same Name:
You may have created a content with the very same name, as it
now exists in master site. When transferring the master content
to your derived site, name conflicts are automatically resolved
and the content from master will get a counter added to its
name.
Manually Copy Between Sites:
A typical pattern which has been observed is that contents are
copied manually between sites, instead of using the appropriate
workflows.
Effects
Ignoring state may be an option:
From the repository perspective you may safely ignore this state,
as the name of the content is not relevant for the Multi-Site
feature to work. The relationship is always derived from the
linked master content. But it may indicate, that a
content receives translations, which is not even included in
your site navigation.
If you continue working with these contents, only the content
which links to the master via master-link will receive updates.
Fixes
Fix Relation:
If you expect that both documents are identical, you may need
to resolve the conflict. Decide which document matches your
desired document best (most likely the one you already had
in your site before).
Prevent
Use Workflows:
Instead of manually copying contents from one site to another,
use workflows such as translation or synchronization workflow
(whichever applies). Note, that this is only possible from
master site to a directly derived site.
Adjust Localization Properties:
If you need to copy a content to your derived site,
ensure to adjust the localization properties. More specifically:
Locale:
Set the locale to the same locale as the site your document
is in.
Master:
Adjust the master-link, so that it links to the same document
in the master site.
Master Version:
Adjust the master version. Most likely, this is the current
version number of the master (you will find it on System tab).
If you want to signal, that this document is not translated
yet, you may negate this version number. Thus, if you have
copied version 5, but you want to mark the document as
not translated yet, set the version number
to -5.
Must Not Duplicate Master Link
If you adapted the master-link but kept the duplicated content,
two contents will refer to the master. Subsequent translation
and synchronization processes will resolve this ambiguity by
choosing a random target content.
Thus, always ensure that a master content is always only
referenced once from a given derived site.
Invalid Master Version
Symptoms
Changes of Links Not Propagated:
If you trigger a translation or synchronization workflow, you
experience, that links changed in master do not make it to
the derived content.
Causes
Unset Master Version:
The master version property may be empty, that is unset.
Technically, the field is set to null.
This triggers the same behavior as:
Invalid Master Version:
The master version may denote a version, which does not exist
or does not exist anymore for several reasons. Negative values
are valid, if their absolute value matches an existing version.
The actual cause of such states is unknown. It may be a special
case of copy & paste between sites, but more likely any
other tools which caused this invalid state. One example may
be, that a version got destroyed by cm
tools.
Effects
Properties Not Updated As Expected:
For any property which is not meant to be translated, the
expectation is, that it gets automatically updated from master.
This feature is called auto-merge. This feature relies on the
ability to determine which properties have been changed from
previous translation or synchronization to now.
If the previous state of properties of the master cannot be
determined because the master version is unset or not existing
the defensive behavior of CoreMedia Multi-Site will assume no changes
to apply.
Fixes
Set Master Version:
If you are lucky, you may guess an appropriate master version
which matches the state of your derived content. If in doubt,
set it to the current master version and review non-translatable
properties such as links in differencing view.
If you have multiple contents in this state, consider setting
it to the negative current master version. This way, you will have
a kind of todo-list, as these contents will be listed as
not translated yet.
Finish Workflow:
Finishing a translation or synchronization workflow will adjust
the version property automatically. This may be the easiest option
to take, but you may miss contents you should have reviewed.
Prevent
Handle With Care:
As the actual cause is quite unknown, there is not much more to
say than to handle the master version property with care. It
contains important information, which, if invalid, may harm
your translation and synchronization processes.
Any tooling and processes provided by CoreMedia respect these
versioned references, so that they are not automatically cleaned
up. The only difference is a tool called cm destroy,
which is especially meant for administrative emergency interventions.
Locale Mismatch
Symptoms
Validation Issue:
Most likely you observed this issue when opening the affected
content in CoreMedia Studio. It will tell you about a mismatch between
the site's locale and the locale set for the content.
Causes
Intended Behavior:
This may be intended behavior, that is, you may want to provide
a content with a different locale in the very same site.
Note, that due to current limitations of CoreMedia Multi-Site it
is not recommended to use locales different to the site locale
within a given site. For details see Effects.
Manually Copy Between Sites:
A typical pattern, which has been observed is, that contents are
copied manually between sites, instead of using the appropriate
workflows.
If doing so, the locale will not be updated accordingly.
Effects
Ignoring state may be an option:
Using different locales within a site may be a valid option,
if the following effects are not relevant to you.
Accidental Locale Clash on Derive Site:
The effect is best described using an example: Think of a master
site having locale en-US. This site contains a
content D with German locale de-DE. If you derive a
new site with German locale, the derived content D' will be
perceived as having the site's locale. In the last step, you will
derive a new site with Dutch locale nl-NL from the
German site. As a result content D'' in the Dutch site will now
be adapted to locale n-NL which may not be
desired.
Figure 4.1. Conflict Site vs. Document Locale
In other words: If the site containing content D is a so-called
leaf-site, thus, having no derived sites, and will never have one,
there is no real issue having this content, unless you do
translation via XLIFF:
Wrong Locale on Translation:
Having a content D with locale de-DE in a site
having locale en-US will result in XLIFF being
generated with site-locale en-US. Thus, translation
agencies will not be aware of the correct locale. This applies
to the target locale as well as to the source locale.
Fixes
Fix Locale:
If you copied the content from another site, adjust the
locale accordingly. It should be the same as the site's locale.
Prevent
Use Workflows:
Instead of manually copying contents from one site to another,
use workflows such as translation or synchronization workflow
(whichever applies). Note, that this is only possible from
master site to a directly derived site.
These workflows will automatically adapt the locale.
Adjust Localization Properties:
If you need to copy a content to your derived site,
ensure to adjust the localization properties. In this case:
Locale: Set the locale to the same locale as the site your content
is in.
