Using the JDD

The JDD completely separates the form of a website from its content enabling minor or extensive design updates to the site without affecting any of the content.

A website page consists of three layers. From the bottom up these are:

• the graphical underlay
• content shared between pages
• content unique to a page

The graphical underlay plus content shared between pages defines a type of page.  These 'page types' are used as templates with page-specific content being added to create a real page on the website.

Structure of the JDD

The JDD is divided into sections reflecting the lifecycle of a website and its content.

JDD Designer

The JDD Designer is used to express any website design in the JDD.  Page templates are defined in the JDD using a combination of HTML, CSS and JDD-specific entities.

Using the defined page templates, the actual pages of the website are created and maintained using JDD Creator.  Page content can be author-derived or can be dynamically created by JDD plug-ins.

JDD Publisher

Before being published, new and edited pages are checked and authorised and the integrity of any manually created links verified.

JDD Go Live!

Single page updates to a website can be made live as soon as they have been checked.  But for a new site or when a site has undergone a major revision the changes can be held back until the new site goes live in its entirety.

JDD Administration

Lastly, security of the web site and the JDD itself needs to be set up as well as configuring the appearance and behaviour of the JDD for various types of users.

You can read more about how the JDD works in our 'Technical Overview of the JDD' document.

I want to test the JDD content management system