Create a new development space from an existing production space

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Creating a new development space from an existing production space

If you already have a space for content, your production space, you can easily and safely create a development environment for it using Comala Publishing.

You can use Comala Publishing to

• copy your current production space pages to a new space to use as a development or draft space and then

• publish and sync the new development space pages to the original production space

The development space can be used to draft, edit, update and check your page content before publishing to the production space.

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Permissions

Before you can undertake any publishing, you will require space administrator permission to configure publishing and action a whole space publishing action.

Any page in the source space that has page-level permissions will not be published in a whole space publishing action if the space administrator does not have view permission for these pages. They pages are effectively hidden from Comala Publishing and will not be included in the space publishing report in the publishing dashboard.

Page history

Comala Publishing publishes pages from a source space to a target space in the same Confluence site. The publishing action creates a new page version in the target space.

After the initial publishing of a page, each subsequent publishing action increments the published target space page version.

Create a development space

This new space will be used later as the source space for the pages currently in your existing space.

• create a new Confluence space

  • this will be your development (DEV) space for creating and editing your draft pages

Once the development (DEV) space is created you will need to populate this new space with the existing content from your current space - the production (PROD) space.

Copying the production space pages to the development space

In the production (PROD) space

• navigate to the Comala publishing dashboard by heading to Space Settings > Manage pages > Publishing

• add your your newly created development (DEV) space as the target space

• choose Change to confirm target space

The target space change/added target space is confirmed on screen.

The publishing dashboard is updated with space publishing (Enable publishing option slider) and the single-page publishing (Enable single page publishing option slider) both enabled by default for the space.

• choose Publish space to copy the space pages to the new development space

Check the publishing dashboard to confirm the entire content has been successfully published to the target space - the development (DEV) space.

Any pages not successfully copied are listed in the publishing dashboard.

If publishing is successful then your pages will be copied to the PROD space

• the pages in each space will be appended with the SYNCED publishing status lozenge

• disable publishing by moving Enable publishing green tick slider in the production (PROD) space publishing dashboard to unlink the two spaces

You can now go to the space settings publishing dashboard in the development (DEV) space to set up publishing from the DEV space to the original production (PROD) space.

Space homepage

Comala Publishing cannot publish the space home page (Overview page).

The homepage content is static in each space - you must manually add any content as the page is not published.

If you want manage the original production space homepage content using publishing you will need to

• create/copy the production space homepage as a child of the new development space homepage

• review your space hierarchy

• check the copied page in-page links and dynamic content macros such as children; page tree; content by label

This should be done before the initial publish action from the new development space.

You must ensure you have an appropriate homepage defined in the published space page hierarchy prior to publishing any content from the new development (DEV) space to the production (PROD) space. Changing a homepage (in either the source or target space) after the initial space publishing action may result in pages to be published to the root of the published space.

Set up the new development space

In the development (DEV) space

• navigate to the Comala publishing dashboard in the DEV space by heading to Space Settings > Manage pages > Publishing

• add your your original production (PROD) space as the target space

• choose Publish space to copy the space pages to the production space

Page URLs and page contentIDs

An important aspect is that during the publishing action from the new source space to a target space all the page contentID's in this production space will be updated (changed).

Original page URL in the production space

• /wiki/spaces/PROD/pages/2438561796/Product+Team+Ethos

Published page URL in the development space

• /wiki/spaces/DEV/pages/2438693479/Product+Team+Ethos

Published page URL in the production space with new contentID

• /wiki/spaces/PROD/pages/2438823986/Product+Team+Ethos

The backward publishing of pages from the production source space to the development space updates the spacekey used in the page URL to the production spacekey.

• this is a new page in the PROD space and will have a new contentID

In-page hyperlinks

In-page links to another page in the source space will be updated on publishing.

Comala Publishing updates/modifies the space and contentID values within the page URL.

For example

• adding a hyperlink in a page in the source DEV space

When published to the target PROD space

• the link will be updated to link to the published page in the target space

Hyperlinks in a page that link to other pages in the source space, must include the page name in the source page link URL together with the page contentID.

• a URL that contains only the page ID may not be updated; they may work in your source space but on publishing to the target space, the link will not be fully updated. A user choosing the link in the published target space will be directed to the source space page

If you add a link to a page in another space in your Confluence site this will be treated as an absolute URL when publishing. It will not change on publishing the page to the target space.

Links to in-page headings or anchors in another

In-page hyperlinks to headings/anchors in another source space page (except those created using macros such as the children or page tree macros) are not updated to the target space when a page is published. In the published target space page the link will redirect you to your source space page.

Deleting pages after publishing

Publishing a child page without a parent

If you publish a child page and the parent page is not present in the target space, the child page will be created and placed in the root directory of the target space. This is most likely to occur when using single-page publishing option as it only publishes the current page and the target space parent page no longer exists or has not yet been published. You may need to re-publish the parent page.

Publishing to the root of the space may also occur when space publishing if the space home page in the target space is changed after the first space publishing action.

Publish using a Comala workflow

You can automate your publishing using Comala Publishing with a Comala Document Management workflow applied to the source space pages.

You can publish content on a transition to the workflow final state or configure a workflow trigger to publish a page on a different workflow event.

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