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Everyone's an Online Author With Novell Net Publisher 1.0 April 3, 2000 By Eric Toll Novell's Net Publisher lets organizations create and share files between branch offices, from the road or from corporate headquarters, by taking advantage of the Internet and the ubiquitous desktop connections to it. While other companies--Apple Computer and Dell Computer, to name two--offer "Web folders" on the Internet for information storage, Novell Net Publisher takes the extra step, letting you author as well as store documents on the Web. Upload the files and documents you want to access and subsequently retrieve them from any terminal with an Internet connection. Or use Net Publisher to create content and post it to the Internet or your company intranet. Further, you can grant other networked users access to your folders and files. With Net Publisher, you can authorize a few users to create Web-based content and assign a manager or appoint a Webmaster to oversee the posting of the pages to a public or private Web server. You also can assign "sub-Webmasters" for each area of a Web site or each department in a large company, then link all the parts to quickly build an intranet. The program runs on a Microsoft Windows NT or Novell NetWare 5 server, but because a large part of Net Publisher is written in Java, look for other ports for Linux and Sun Solaris in the near future. Net Publisher also has been integrated with Office 2000 and it supports the WebDAV (Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning) standard.
Internet File-Sharing Files are stored in their native formats and automatically converted to HTML when accessed. The URL naming convention of a Web folder looks simple--www.myserver.com/folder, for instance. If you're using Office 2000, you can give your Web folder an alias, such as "My Web Folder." To test Net Publisher, I signed in and had my own Web site at my command. The first thing I did was create several folders for uploaded files. The menus are logically listed in a vertical arrangement along the left, with a hierarchical view of folders and function commands. The layout is quite similar to that of Novell's GroupWise WebAccess in the Enhancement Pack. To upload files, you use a dialog box to browse for files and add them to your Web folders. I didn't like having to select files one at a time, but you can build a huge list of files this way to send in one session. Once posted, the files can be accessed via a Web browser. Files can be posted as "view only" or with full editing access. You can select the people you want to allow to see your files from the built-in address book. Posted files can be saved and then checked out by you or other authorized users. Once a file is checked out, it stays locked until the user returns it.
Tools of the Trade Optionally, you can use a Novell LDAP server, which you'll have to install from the NetWare 5 CD first, then patch with SP4. The Web server has access to LDAP and LDAP has access to NDS. The server must have Novell PKI Services and be SSL (Secure Sockets Layer)-enabled. SSL is an important component that should be set up properly for security. Net Publisher is very secure: The product can be configured with 128-bit encryption keys, passwords can be 20 characters or more, and the LDAP proxy user has no actual file permissions to NDS--just read-only rights. If someone did by chance sign in, he or she would be able to access only the Net Publisher store, not your corporate NDS. The package also is secure in that you can enter your login ID in a fully distinguished fashion, such as name.ou.etc. The minimum requirements for the server are a 90-MHz Pentium with 128 MB of RAM, but this is a little light if you are going to put it all on one box, as I did. Instead, I used an Intel 400-MHz Pentium II with 256 of MB RAM and a 10,000-rpm SCSI drive, and the program ran very well. Eric Toll is a freelance technology writer based in Syracuse, NY. Send your comments on this article to him at Etoll@panthus.com.
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