Cross-site publishing with SharePoint 2013

 Jul 15, 2014

SharePoint 2013 introduces cross-site publishing as an alternative to content deployment paths and jobs. The cross-site publishing feature enables content to be reused across multiple site collections even when they are in different web applications or farms. It’s a very powerful new feature that, for the first time, enables sites to span the boundary between intranets and the Internet. With cross-site publishing, content can be created in an intranet authoring site and then published to your company internet facing site, which could even be located in another farm. Cross-site publishing relies on search technology to retrieve content. You also need a term set for tagging the published content. The first step is to activate the cross-site publishing feature in a site collection. Then you can create libraries and lists, and share them as catalogs. You have to associate one of the columns of your library or list with the term you created for tagging content. This column will be a type of managed metadata. When the cross-site publishing feature is enabled, a new section called ‘Catalog Settings’ is added to the settings page of all libraries and lists in the site collection. All you have to do is check the check box ‘Enable this library as a catalog.’  A catalog is just a library or list that can be consumed from external site collections. In the ‘Catalog Item URL Fields’ section, you can select up to five fields that uniquely identify an item in the library or list. In the ‘Navigation Hierarchy’ section, select the column that is associated with the term set that you want to use to navigate the catalog pages. The search service will eventually crawl the catalog-enabled libraries and lists, and populate the search index with entries from the content that will be published. Next, add one or more Search Web Parts to pages in sites where you want to display the catalog content. When those pages are displayed in the web browser, the Search Web Part queries the search index and results from the catalog are shown to the user. A very easy way to get started with cross-site publishing is to use the ‘Product Catalog’ template to create a new site collection. This template is available in the publishing tab in the ‘Create Site Collection’ page. The template includes a list that is already configured as a catalog, and you can adapt that catalog to your requirements. To learn more about cross-site publishing and many more exciting new features in SharePoint 2013, I recommend that you take a look at New Horizons’ the courses 20488 – Developing Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 Core Solutions and 20489 – Developing Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 Advanced Solutions.

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About the Author:

Newton Godoy  

With over 17 years of in-class training experience and over 16 years of industry experience, Newton offers students a wealth of real-world technical knowledge and expertise in the areas of .NET application development, SQL Server and SharePoint Server. After spending several years lecturing as a professor, Newton found his true calling and began his career as a MCT. He worked as a technical trainer for some of Brazil’s and Australia’s largest corporate training organisations before finally finding a home with New Horizons where he is now one of our top trainers. Newton brings a thorough mentoring capability to the classroom where he can advise on technical issues and challenges often beyond the scope of the course curriculum. His combination of technical knowledge and instructor experience make him one of the most respected instructors within the IT training industry.

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