Cross Site Publishing – Introduction – Part 1

Introduction

In this series, let us try to understand the end-to-end process/implementation involved in Cross Site Publishing (CSP) in SharePoint 2013. CSP is a feature which is newly introduced in SharePoint 2013 which has a strong impact in the SharePoint 2013 Web Content Management Portals Implementation. Its becoming Mandatory for every organisation/developer to know about this in detail as many of the customers now a days are looking for segregating the Contents from the Publishing Site. Let me try to cover this topic with a detailed information.

Cross Site Publishing (CSP)

Before diving into the implementation, let us see what exactly CSP is. Cross Site Publishing is nothing but the content is going to reside on a separate web application and the publishing site is going to reside on a separate web application. This relationship between the Authoring(Content) and the Publishing site are Many to Many. i.e., A single content source can be utilized by more than one publishing site and in vice versa.

Scenarios where CSP can be used

There are many scenarios in which CSP can be used. Let us see two of them. This will give the readers an idea about this technique before moving technically.

1. The customer wants to have a Central Repository, where a set of Authors will write their content periodically. There are many publishing sites, which has a different branding (User Interfaces) based on their publishing frequency. For e.g., a Monthly Updating Site which will consolidate all the contents which were published every month and a Weekly updating site which will consolidate all the contents in a weekly manner. For both the sites, the Source of Content is going to be the Same Content Site.

2. The other scenario could be, the customer is having a set of Authors who will be writing in a specific areas. E.g., Products, Legislative Issues etc., By that time, if customer wants to keep these two set of authors separately, we can keep 2 authoring sites. One for the Products and the second is for the Legislative Issues. The publishing site can consume the content from both these Content Site.

Note:In this entire content, both the words ‘Content’ and ‘Authoring’, I am referring are meant to same. In some places, I might use ‘Content’ and in some places ‘Authoring’.

Advantages of CSP

1. Many publishing site can be kept with minimal effort, as the content is going to be consumed from a different site collection.

2. No duplication of the Content. As the Content is in a different site collection, many site collections can consume the content from the single source itself.

3. Maintaining the User Permissions. Even the Authors will not have edit access to the Publishing Site directly.

4. Publishing Site – Secured. As the authors were not directly given the write/edit permission on the publishing site, the publishing site will be more secured. No one apart from the Admin can publish the content. The admin can review the content from the Authoring Site itself and then once he feel good, then he can publish that.

5. Preview – The content will not be published to the Published site directly. It can be reviewed on the Authoring site and then, it will get published to Publishing site.

With this basic introduction, let us proceed to the implementation. Part 2

Happy Coding.

Sathish Nadarajan.