Scaling up with Premium+ hosting service

For Premium+ clients, we offer an additional layer of service during your site configuration and deployment (at no additional cost) – the possibility of deploying a separate read-only public-facing AtoM instance, allowing you to use your read/write site internally as a staging site. Artefactual will prepare a replication script for you that copies the contents of your database, uploads directory and search index from your internal staging site to the public site. When you’ve made changes internally and are ready to make them publicly available, you can then run the replication script from the command-line – we’ll show you how.

Structure of AtoM Premium+, which is on a dedicated server. First, archivists manage data on the internal site, run the replication script when data is ready for public visibility. This input feeds into the internal read/write site. Running the replication script pushes content to the public-facing read only site. Then public users access the read-only site. Login is disabled and content from the internal site is not visible until replicated.

Though this two-site deployment is not necessary, it does have several advantages. These advantages include:

The public site has read-only access to the database, and is configured to prevent login, adding extra security.
The timeout limits can be configured differently between the public site (lower timeouts to serve multiple requests faster) and the internal site (small number of users running longer jobs like import, loading digital objects, reporting).
If you have a large dataset and need to rebuild your search index, the rebuild can run for a long time, during which partial search results will be returned. Replication from your internal edit site to your public site takes less time than re-indexing, so you can re-index internally, and then replicate to your public site with less service interruption for public users
Currently in AtoM, archival descriptions are the only entity that have a publication status (draft or published), allowing you to control their visibility to public users. This means that by default, any authority record, term, or repository you create in a single site deployment is immediately visible to public users. With a read-only public facing site, you have more control. Records are not copied to the public site until you explicitly replicate, allowing you to work on other entity records internally at your own pace.
A separate internal staging site is especially useful if you are doing a lot of data imports, whether via CSV or XML. You can review and update your imports as needed before they become public. Additionally, if something goes wrong and you need Artefactual to roll you back to the most recent backup, your public site is not affected while we assist you – nothing changes there until you choose to run the replication script.