Cleaning up unused Publish Form properties for Drupal 7 from Enterprise Server 9

Info: This feature requires Enterprise Server version 9.4.5 or higher.

During the process of importing content types from Drupal 7 as Publish Form templates, tables and properties are added to the database in Enterprise Server.

If at some later stage the imported Publish Form templates are removed from Enterprise because they are not needed anymore, the columns and properties still remain in the database in Enterprise.

This can have the following results:

• The number of columns can hit defined database limits
• The unused columns can negatively impact performance

It is therefore advisable to clean up the Enterprise database by following the steps that are described here in this article.

Steps in Content Station

Step 1. Unpublish all stories that were published using the template.

Tip: Use the Publish Manager to quickly unpublish multiple stories in one action.

Step 2. Access the Dossier(s) that were used for publishing the stories and remove the Publication Channel in which the template was used.

During this step, the Publish Form that was used for publishing the story is automatically moved to the Trash Can. Before the Publish Form template itself can be removed, all Publish Forms that are based on it first need to be removed.

Step 3. Access the Trash Can, locate the Publish Forms and permanently delete them.

Tip: Set the Filter to look for files of type 'Publish Form'.

Step 4. Use the Search feature of Content Station to locate the Publish Form template that needs to be removed.

Tip: Set the Filter to look for files of type 'Publish Form Template'.

Step 5. Right-click the template and choose Move to Trash Can.

Step 6. Access the Trash Can, locate the Publish Form templates and permanently delete them.

Steps in Drupal

Note: This step will remove the content type from Drupal. This step is optional and does not necessarily have to be performed. However, when the content type is not removed, it will appear again in Content Station in the list of templates to choose from as soon as content types are imported into Enterprise again.

Step 7. Click Structure > Content Types.

Step 8. Click Delete for the content type that needs to be deleted and confirm the action.

Steps in Enterprise Server

Step 9. Import the content types from Drupal 7.

Enterprise detects that custom properties are present which are no longer used and shows a message.

Step 10. Click the link named Clean Up Server Plug-in Custom properties.

The "Clean Up Server Plug-in Custom properties" page appears, showing an overview of the database objects that are not used anymore.

Tip: Click Show to show the details per database table.

Step 11. Click Clean Up and confirm that you want to start the process.

When the process is completed, the final result is shown.