Where Code and Content Meet: Design Patterns for Web Content Management and Delivery, Personalisation and User Participation

Chapter 5. Deployment and Infrastructure

In the preceding chapters we analysed how to structure, validate, organise and deliver web content. We looked at how domain logic can be applied, how search functionality can be integrated and how personalisation strategies can be added. We studied how s can be applied to create the actual web pages. We looked at quite a few software components, custom and otherwise, and at how they collaborate.

It's now time to examine how a website can go live. You might want to launch a new site or to relaunch an existing one, but in any case it's important to establish a set of reliable deployment processes and mechanisms. This is what this chapter is about.

This chapter is also about the infrastructure that's necessary to do so. It's about environments for development, testing and operation, and about how these environments have to be equipped to serve their purposes well.

Much of what can be said about deployment and infrastructure isn't specific to content management and content delivery, of course, but applies equally to web applications in general. I'm not going to talk much about web applications though, but rather keep the focus on content-related aspects of deployment and infrastructure. For a broader discussion of these topics, I'd like to refer you to the relevant literature, especially the patterns that Paul Dyson and Andy Longshaw describe in Architecting Enterprise Solutions (Dyson Longshaw 2004). Putting a strong focus on the non-functional ...