I have never been a big fan of Livesite. Though the basic idea of combining open standards like Java en Xsl with a good looking GUI to render your content is charming, the Interwoven implementation of this idea has many issues. Well, let me call them "items to improve":

• the manual for developers is unreadable and almost useless;


• the installation and upgrade process is unnecessary complex. And apart from that, it messes up your existing installation with unwanted templates and workflows;


• the resulting (front-end) html is very messy and far from w3c-compliant or wai-accessible;


• all custom-configuration like components, layouts, etc. have a server-global-scope. It is impossible to limit the use of a specific component/layout to 1 branch only. Yes, your intranet news-component can be placed on a public-facing webpage!


• It is almost impossible to enforce a corporate webstyle. Editors are free to chose any available page-template for your public homepage.


• the preview, workflow & deploy mechanism does not follow the teamsite standards and good-practices. F.i. preview is not routed via the (flexible) iwproxy and uses the built-in tomcat. This has the side-effect that in order to install new java-code your must restart the servlet resulting in Teamsite downtime for other developers.


• an url-management-mechanism is missing. Search-engine-optimised-urls are out of your league.

The good news is that in the coming weeks I plan to post some tips on using and customising Livesite to your needs. I hope this will make your life with Livesite a little easier. Stay tuned.