How Do I ... Publish my site to a stage instance

You can accomplish a lot in preview and testing a page or site before it publishes. For instance, you can switch to preview mode by clicking Preview in the upper right corner of the screen when the page editor is open. This will let you test the layout of the page to ensure the different components appear as you intended.

You can also preview a page by removing it from the page editor. This helps authorized content creators to test links to other pages within Ensemble or to external sites. To accomplish that, edit the path in the address bar of your page to adjust the following.

1. Remove editor.html/ from the URL
2. Add ?wcmmode=disabled at the end of the string.

To test this page outside of the editor, change the URL from https://author.ensemble.vt.edu/editor.html/content/ensemble_cms_vt_edu/en/help/how-to/how-to-publishing.html

to

https://author.ensemble.vt.edu/content/ensemble_cms_vt_edu/en/help/how-to/how-to-publishing.html?wcmmode=disabled

In the latest version of Ensemble, you can accomplish the same high-quality preview by selecting "View as Published" from the hamburger menu in the editor mode (three stacked lines like three slider controls). You'll need to reopen or refresh the new window to see changes as you edit but you'll likely find that you don't use the traditional preview at all.

Finally, if you are working on a site that has yet to launch, you can and should publish your pages to a stage site. The stage URL will be https://sitename.stage.cms.vt.edu.

For instance:

• The Alumni Affairs site would be https://alumni.stage.cms.vt.edu
• The College of Science site would be https://science.stage.cms.vt.edu
• The Financial Aid office site would be https://finaid.stage.cms.vt.edu

Sites on a subdomain will need to follow a similar path. For example, the Wang Lab would be http://wanglab.beam.stage.cms.vt.edu

Remember, you will also need to publish the site level page, and the 'en' page, as well as any content pages for the site to appear at the stage URL.

Scheduling a DNS change
Your Ensemble site will publish to its stage URL until you request a launch. To do so, submit a Ensemble Jira ticket to request that your site be part of an upcoming DNS restart. Those restarts occur on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Please allow for at least 24 hours notice before you intend to launch. Most importantly, you will need to publish the content you wish to launch to your stage site instance. 

To publish pages, select the check mark next to the page title. You can select more than one, however you will need to choose all children pages within a folder. Publishing the parent page only will not publish the child pages within that folder.

With the pages selected, choose Publish from the list of icons along the top of the MySites screen. The selected pages will then be published. Assets on pages designated for publishing should also publish.