“Online only” folders

In OpenCms, the virtual file system with all folders, contents, and files exists in duplicate, in an offline and an online version. The online version can never be edited directly. Changes can only be made by publishing content that has been edited offline.

However, there are special cases where separating the offline and online versions does not offer any advantages and can even be a hindrance.

These include interfaces to external databases. When external data is imported into OpenCms, it is usually already in a form suitable for the public. An additional detour via the offline project then seems unnecessary. When importing large amounts of data, OpenCms editors also experience waiting times, as their manual changes are queued for publication together with the data synchronization.

For such special cases, the concept of “online only” folders has now been introduced, which offers two advantages: First, changes made in an “online only” folder are published immediately. Second, publication is performed in the background, so that extensive data synchronization no longer causes waiting times the editors.

By default, the folder /system/shared/online is defined as an “online only” folder in the system. Additional folders can be added via the opencms-vfs.xml configuration file.