Home → General →

Associated asset publishing details

• Edit

Allie

21 Dec, 2011 04:09 PM

Hi there,
Whenever we publish pages in Cascade, the publishing reports list all the associated assets (e.g. site-wide stylesheets and images, etc.) for a given page and seem to indicate that all those assets are also published at the same time. Are the assets really published every time when pages using them are published? Or Cascade only publish the associated assets if they have been changed since the last time they were published?
Thanks,
-Allie

1. 1 Posted by Joel on 21 Dec, 2011 04:22 PM

   

   Hi Allie,

   Do you have Smart Publishing enabled? If so then any files that have been modified in the CMS since the last publish to a specific destination will be republished (saved on publishing time). Also, files which have been altered or removed on the remote machine will be republished.

   Thanks!

   • Edit

2. 2 Posted by Ai, Allie on 21 Dec, 2011 05:12 PM

   

   Thanks, Joel. We do have Smart Publishing enabled and the publishing behavior you described makes sense. I did not know that Cascade also checks the web server (destination) to see if the assets on the server have been touched (outside Cascade) and publish the assets accordingly - pretty thorough! When those modified associated assets get published due to a page publishing, will this publishing activity show up in those assets' audit trails? Also, what happens if the Smart Publishing is not enabled - will Cascade publish all the related assets regardless the assets' freshness? Lastly, the Successful Jobs in the publishing report/message seems to be misleading then because not all the assets listed there are published - they are all checked for freshness and only the modified ones since last publish are published, correct? Thanks again, Allie

   • Edit

3. 3 Posted by Joel on 21 Dec, 2011 05:30 PM

   

   Allie,

   When those modified associated assets get published due to a page publishing, will this publishing activity show up in those assets' audit trails?

   No, just the pages' audit trail that initiated the publish job.

   Also, what happens if the Smart Publishing is not enabled - will Cascade publish all the related assets regardless the assets' freshness?

   Correct!

   Lastly, the Successful Jobs in the publishing report/message seems to be misleading then because not all the assets listed there are published - they are all checked for freshness and only the modified ones since last publish are published, correct?

   I'm not quite sure, have you verified that the assets have not been touched on the web server or within the CMS and smart publishing is enabled? If so then yes, it may be misleading and I can see what we can do to address this issue. Please keep in mind that this only applies to file assets though.

   Thanks!

   • Edit

4. 4 Posted by Ai, Allie on 21 Dec, 2011 06:41 PM

   

   Joel,
   Regarding the meaning of the Successful Jobs items on a publishing report: for the particular page that triggered this conversation, there are 27 items (.css, images, .js - all file assets) listed in the Successful Jobs section in the publishing report, including a site-wide css file that we are trying to track down its publishing activities, e.g. who published it and when. I have no way to find out now about each of those 27 items to see if they were modified outside or inside Cascade before publishing, so I am just wondering about the designed meaning for those items listed in publishing reports. Yes, I have Smart Publishing enabled. So in our case, I can conclude that all the 27 items were indeed published along with the page that initiated the publish job, and there is no audit trail of this particular publish act for those 27 items, correct?
   Thanks again,
   -Allie

   • Edit

5. 5 Posted by Joel on 21 Dec, 2011 06:51 PM

   

   Allie,

   Try checking the timestamps for those file assets on the web server to see if they correlate with the last publish time of them. My guess is that they're likely being overwritten or simply updated via something else other than the CMS (if the editing is not occurring within the CMS). Please let me know what you find.

   Thanks!

   • Edit

6. 6 Posted by Ai, Allie on 21 Dec, 2011 07:55 PM

   

   Joel,
   I checked some of the images and js files that have not been touched inside Cascade and the timestamps on the web server for those assets are from way, way back then, and they are definitely not correlating with the last publish of the particular page in question. So it seems that the listing of the 27 items under Successful Jobs - one is the page itself and the other 26 items are assets used by the page - does not really tell me what gets published or not at all or if the system has done anything to those assets while it simply listing all the assets used by this page. It'd be helpful if this is more clear in the future versions. Let me know if there is anything else I need to check or know.
   Thanks again,
   Allie

   • Edit

7. 7 Posted by Ryan Griffith on 21 Jun, 2012 05:59 PM

   

   Hi Allie,

   I was going over some older discussions and noticed this one is still open.

   I believe Smart Publishing checks the timestamp of those additional files to see if they were recently updated within Cascade, and if not, they are skipped (but still reported on).

   Please feel free to let us know if you have any other questions.

   Thanks.

   • Edit

8. Ryan Griffith closed this discussion on 21 Jun, 2012 05:59 PM.