Studio Server full installation – Home

This article describes the installation of Studio Server on a system on which it is not yet installed.

Info:

The information in this article only applies to the on-premise version of Studio, not to the cloud version.

Performing the steps described in this article requires direct server access. Depending upon how your system is hosted and the level of access you have to that system, coordination may be required with your Partner or WoodWing Support team.For a full overview of the steps that need to be done by WoodWing and how to request them, see WoodWing Cloud - Change management.

Before you start

Before starting the installation, make a plan of what is needed: which features of Studio Server and its clients do you want to make use of and which additional (third-party) software does this require?

Examples:

Control user authorizations externally by integrating LDAP.
For print workflows it is highly recommended to integrate Adobe InDesign Server. This makes it possible to hand off tasks to InDesign Server (such as the generation of layout previews, thumbnails or PDFs), crop images in Studio, and more.
Enable messaging so that changes that a user makes — such as changing the properties of a file — are immediately visible to other users.
Store and archive files in a Digital Assets Management system (DAM) by integrating WoodWing Assets.

As a starting point, use the Compatibility Matrix to verify which software versions you need and if any upgrades are required.

Important: Use of WAMP or LAMP not supported
WAMP and LAMP are single-distribution packages for Windows and Linux that combine the installation of Apache, PHP, and MySQL. These make them potentially ideal for quickly setting up a new Studio Server environment. However, such packages are meant for development purposes and are not to be used in live production environments.
The use of WAMP or LAMP for installing a Studio Server environment is therefore not supported.

Upgrading InDesign and InCopy

When you are upgrading to a new version of Adobe InDesign or InCopy, keep the following in mind:

All InDesign and InCopy users should use the same Adobe version. This is because documents created in a newer version cannot be opened in a previous version.
Convert any InDesign and InCopy templates to the new version of InDesign and InCopy. Do this by opening the file and re-saving it.

Installation steps

Filter this section to show each step individually:

The installation consists of various steps which should be performed in the following order:

Setting up the database
Installing and configuring PHP
Configuring the Web Server
(Optional) Configuring the ExifTool
Installing Studio Server
Installing ionCube loaders
(Optional) Determining the location of the File Transfer Server folder
Creating Studio Server database tables
Activating licenses
Initializing Studio Server plug-ins
Testing the Studio Server installation
Integrating Apache Solr
(Optional) Preview generation for additional file formats
Configuring Studio Server
Setting File Storage settings
Reviewing security settings
Customizing the interface
Setting up a Brand
Connecting to WoodWing Cloud Services
Planning periodic clean-up of the WebEdit folders for InDesign Server hosts

Step 1. Setting up the database

Install and set up the database for storing all Studio Server related data.

Steps for MySQL

Step 1. Perform the installation by following the instructions on mysql.com:

For MySQL:
See the MySQL Reference Manual

For Amazon Aurora for MySQL:
Follow the links on the Amazon Aurora page and the Amazon Aurora Features page.

Tip: A commonly used client to interact with the MySQL database is phpMyAdmin.

Step 2. Create a new database and set the collation to 'utf8_general_ci' and use a descriptive name such as 'Studio Server'.

Steps for MSSQL

Create a new database with the help of the Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio. For more information, see the Microsoft documentation: Create a database.

Notes:

Use a descriptive database name such as 'Studio Server'.
For collation, choose the option Latin1_General_CI_AI.

Important: You must choose the Latin1_General_CI_AI option regardless of your language, country or region. Other options are NOT supported by Studio Server.

Step 2. Installing and configuring PHP

Step 1. Install PHP.

Steps for Windows

Install PHP by following the instructions on php.iis.net or windows.php.net.

Note: If you want to use PHP together with IIS choose the FastCGI version. In that case the Non-Thread Safe version of PHP is required.

Steps for Linux

Perform the installation by referring to the documentation of your specific Linux distribution.

Note about using RHEL 9 in combination with PHP 8.1: When using RHEL 9, PHP version 8.1 needs to be used, or vice versa (see the Compatibility Matrix). In this setup, the php-mod module for Apache cannot be used anymore and PHP-FPM should be used instead.

When using PHP-FPM, some third-party client applications using a specific HTTP protocol¹ to upload files may silently fail. On such failure, the files uploaded in the Transfer Server folder will contain a zero-byte file.

To resolve this, enable the following option in the Apache configuration:

<IfModule mod_proxy_http.c>
    SetEnv proxy-sendcl 1
</IfModule>

¹ This HTTP protocol is about file uploads using the chunked transfer encoding without specifying the content length HTTP header.

Step 2. Configure PHP by editing the php.ini file as described below.

Step 2a. Ensure that variables_order is set to EGPCS:

variables_order = "EGPCS".

Step 2b. Change the following settings to at least the shown values:

upload_max_filesize = 250M

post_max_size = 250M

memory_limit = 750M

Step 2c. Ensure that request_order includes "GPC", for example:

request_order = "GPC"

Step 2d. Add the correct time zone, for example:

date.timezone = Europe/Amsterdam

Note: For a full list of time zones, see http://nl3.php.net/manual/en/timezones.php.

Step 2e. Add the following entries and set the path according to your setup:

session.save_path =
upload_tmp_dir =

Example:

session.save_path = C:\PHP\sessiondata

upload_tmp_dir = C:\PHP\uploadtemp

Note: Ensure that both folders have full Read and Write access enabled for the Web Server user, for example the Internet Guest User.

Step 3. Enable the following PHP modules:

Note about installing the JSON module (only applies to PHP 7.x, not to PHP 8.1 or higher): Although the PHP manual states that 'The JSON extension is bundled and compiled into PHP by default', it seems that this is not always the case for all CentOS/RHEL distributions. As a result, the Health Check for Studio Server may fail unexpectedly during the execution of its test items later in the installation process. To check if the extension is loaded, open the Health Check page once the server is fully installed and then open the PHP Info page. Search for 'json support' for which the value 'enabled' should be set. If that is not the case, install the JSON extension for PHP with for example the yum install php-json command as mentioned in the PHP documentation and restart the web server. Then open the PHP Info page once more to validate whether the JSON extension is loaded by PHP.

Step 4. Enable the DB module for PHP:

For MySQL: Follow the PHP manual for installing the MySQLi driver.
For MSSQL: Follow the instructions in the Microsoft documentation: Microsoft PHP Driver for SQL Server.

Step 5. Save the file.

Step 6. Restart the Web service.

Step 3. Configuring the Web Server

Take note of the following information, depending on the Web Server used.

Apache

To manually configure the Apache configuration files for PHP, edit conf/httpd.conf to enable PHP support in both the Load Module list and Add Module list.

Some Apache installations overrule the character set of HTML pages. As a result, accented characters are not displayed correctly by the Studio Server Maintenance applications. This can be fixed by changing or adding AddDefaultCharSet in the Apache configuration file conf/httpd.conf to:

AddDefaultCharSet UTF-8

–or–

AddDefaultCharSet off

Also set the DefaultType to:

DefaultType text/html

Note: The default Web page for Studio Server should be index.htm. However, for Apache it can be index.php as well in which case the Studio Server logon page remains empty. To avoid this problem, make sure the index.htm file is listed above the index.php file in the httpd configuration file.

Microsoft IIS

It is recommended to increase the maximum size that IIS allows for uploads. This is done by changing the 'Maximum allowed content length' setting.

Note: Reaching the limit can result in errors such as 'HTTP error 413' when for example a user tries to save a file to the database.

For information about changing this setting, see the following links:

web-site-scripts.com: Increasing maximum allowed size for uploads on IIS7
docs.microsoft.com: Request Limits <requestLimits>

Step 4. (Optional) Configuring the ExifTool

When images are uploaded, Studio Server extracts metadata. This metadata is used for populating basic metadata fields (such as author, credit, format, and so on), as well as specific fields such as width and orientation (used for cropping images).

The ExifTool is part of the Studio Server installation and can optionally be configured.

(Optional) Configuration

The order in which image properties are resolved can be based on the metadata containers (such as 'Exif', 'XMP', and 'IPTC') that are extracted by the ExifTool application.

Different metadata containers can contain different values for the same image attribute.

Example: 'Credit' => [ 'IPTC', 'XMP' ] means that first the 'IPTC' metadata container is used to resolve the 'Credit' attribute. If this gives a result, the 'XMP' container is ignored. Only in case of no result is the 'XMP' container used.

To do this, configure the following option:

File: config.php file (recommended: config_overrule.php file)
Name of option: EXIFTOOL_METADATA_ORDER
Possible values: See below.
Example:

if( !defined( 'EXIFTOOL_METADATA_ORDER' ) ) {
	define( 'EXIFTOOL_METADATA_ORDER', serialize(
			[
				'Author' => [ 'EXIF', 'IPTC', 'XMP' ],
				'Credit' => [ 'IPTC', 'XMP' ],
				'ColorSpace' => [ 'EXIF', 'XMP' ],
				'Comment' => [ 'XMP', 'IPTC' ],
				'DocumentID' => [ 'IPTC', 'XMP' ],
				'Description' => [ 'EXIF', 'IPTC', 'XMP' ],
				'DescriptionAuthor' => [ 'IPTC', 'XMP' ],
				'Copyright' => [ 'EXIF', 'IPTC', 'XMP' ],
				'Keywords' => [ 'IPTC', 'XMP' ],
				'Slugline' => [ 'IPTC', 'XMP' ],
				'Source' => [ 'IPTC', 'XMP' ],
				'Format' => [ 'File', 'XMP' ],
			]
		)
	);
}

Uncomment the attribute and change the order of the containers as needed.

Notes:

Not all containers are applicable for every attribute.
The ordering is only supported for the attributes that are listed.

Step 5. Installing Studio Server

Step 1. Download the Studio Server application from the software release page.

Step 2. Unzip the file.

The unzipped folder contains a folder named 'StudioServer' containing files such as index.php, index.html, index.htm.

Step 3. Copy the complete StudioServer folder to the server machine’s Web root folder (such as webroot).

Note: The location is dependent on the system and HTTP Server used (Apache/IIS), but should normally be in the following location:

Windows: c:\inetpub\wwwroot
Linux: /var/www/html

Step 4. Create a folder named FileStore and apply access rights.

Note: The default location for the FileStore folder is as follows:

Linux: /FileStore

Windows: c:\FileStore

This is not a location we advise to use for production systems; it has just been chosen to make an easy initial installation possible. The location can always be changed at a later stage (but note that the whole directory also has to be copied to the new location).

Make sure that read and write access is set for the following users:

Windows: “IUSR_<servername>”

Linux: “nobody”

Tip: A typical setup would be to create a root FileStore and create the other directories in it.

Step 5. Verify the following options in the configserver.php file or the config.php file (recommended: config_overrule.php file):

The location of this file is:

<Studio Server path>/config

Configure database access using the following options:

Option	File
DBTYPE	configserver.php
DBSERVER	configserver.php
MSSQL_EXTRA_CONNECTION_OPTIONS	configserver.php
DBSELECT	config.php
DBUSER¹	config.php
DBPASS	config.php

¹ The DBUSER is the single database user that is used by the application server to access the database. This database user account needs SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE privileges, plus ALTER TABLE privileges for the creation and deletion of custom properties. The application server itself authorizes all requests for the user logged on via the Studio Server user tables which are completely separate from the database users. Default is ‘root’. For MSSQL Server you could use ‘sa’ as default.

Configure the web access using the following options:

Option	File
BASEDIR	config.php
INETROOT	config.php

Configure file access using the following options:

Option	File
ATTACHMENTDIRECTORY	config.php
WOODWINGSYSTEMDIRECTORY	config.php
TEMPDIRECTORY	config.php
EXPORTDIRECTORY	config.php

Configure the path to the ExifTool using the following option:

Option	File
EXIFTOOL_APP_PATH	configserver.php

(For Studio Server 10.43.0 and higher) Configure the password settings using the following options so that they match your company's security rules:

Note: These settings are also used for randomly generating a password for user 'woodwing'. This takes place when installing the Studio Server database later on in the process. These credentials are used for logging in to Studio Server for the first time after installation.

Option	File
PASSWORD_MIN_CHAR	configserver.php
PASSWORD_MIN_SPECIAL	configserver.php
PASSWORD_MIN_UPPER	configserver.php
PASSWORD_MIN_LOWER	configserver.php

Step 6. Installing ionCube loaders

For security reasons, Studio Server uses ionCube to encrypt some of its PHP modules.

The process of checking the currently installed version of ionCube and guiding you through any upgrade steps is built in to Studio Server.

Step 1. Try accessing the Studio Server Health Check page by entering the following URL in a Web browser:

http://<your server URL>/StudioServer/server/wwtest

Example: http://localhost/StudioServer/server/wwtest

The installation of ionCube is automatically tested. During this process, you might see various progress bars appear. Depending on the result of the test, the following will happen:

The Health Check page appears. This means that ionCube Loader is correctly installed. No further action is required.

The ionCube Loader Wizard for Studio Server appears. This means that the ionCube Loader is not correctly installed or that an incorrect version is installed. The information provided on the page will give you an indication of the exact problem and how to resolve it.

Step 2. Repeat step 1 until the Health Check page appears. This is an indication that ionCube is correctly installed.

Step 7. (Optional) Determining the location of the File Transfer Server folder

The File Transfer Server is a feature of Studio Server which separates files from operational data during an upload or download process, resulting in a higher performance and lower memory footprint.

You can optionally move the File Transfer folder to another system to:

Offload file traffic over HTTP to a dedicated server farm or network
Let file traffic run over a dedicated URL, other than client-server service communication
Offload the file traffic to the File Store to another physical file location

To do so, follow the steps as described in Installing the Transfer Server Folder on another system.

Step 8. Creating Studio Server database tables

Create tables in your installed database for storing data relating to using Studio Server.

Creating the database tables is an automated process that is triggered by running the Database Connection test on the Health Check page in Studio Server.

Step 1. In Studio Server, access the Health Check page:

Step 1a. In Studio Server, click Advanced in the Maintenance menu or on the Home page. A page with all advanced Maintenance features appears.

Step 1b. Click Health Check. The Health Check page appears.

Step 2. At the bottom of the page, click Clear All.

Step 3. Only select the Database Connection test.

Step 4. Click Test.

The test is executed and the result is displayed next to the test. It should display “OK”.

Note: If the test fails, an error is displayed together with instructions for solving it. Follow the instructions and then run the test once more.

Step 5. (For Studio Server 10.43.0 and higher) A randomly generated password for administrator 'woodwing' is displayed. Copy this password, it is needed to log in to Studio Server for the first time.

Note: When this password is forgotten, installation of the database needs to be re-done. This means that all tables of the database must be dropped and the steps of the Database Health Check must be repeated.

Step 6. (For Studio Server 10.43.0 and higher) Replace the default password in the following setting in the configserver.php file by the password that was generated in step 5:

define('TESTSUITE', serialize(array(
        'User'     => 'woodwing',   // User name => for automatic login during tests
        'Password' => 'ww',         // User password => "    "
        'Brand'    => 'WW News',    // Brand name => picked to create/retrieve test data
        'Issue'    => '2nd Issue',  // Issue name => "      "
        'Edition'  => 'North',      // Edition name => "      "
        'SoapUrlDebugParams' => '', // Debug params posted by SoapClient at SOAP entry point URL (only applied
        // when DEBUGLEVELS is set to 'DEBUG'). Typically useful to trigger debuggers.
)));

Step 9. Activating licenses

In order to complete the setup process of Studio Server, its license needs to be activated first. This allows you to access the Maintenance pages of Studio Server and allows users of client applications to log in to the Server. At this time, you might also want to activate all client applications.

For information about activating licenses for Studio Server and its client applications, see Managing licenses in Studio Server.

Step 10. Initializing Studio Server plug-ins

Many of the Studio Server functionality is provided through plug-ins. These plug-ins need to be initialized first.

Step 1. In Studio Server, click Server Plug-ins in the Maintenance menu or on the Home page.

The Server Plug-ins page appears and any installed plug-ins will be automatically registered.

Note: Because the plug-ins are registered while the page is opened, the process of opening the page can take a few moments.

Step 2. Make sure that the required plug-ins are enabled. If needed, resolve any conflicts.

Note: Normally, no conflicts should arise and no further action will be required after accessing the page.

Step 11. Testing the Studio Server installation

The setup is now ready to be tested.

Step 1. Open a Web browser and enter the URL for the installed server.

Example: http://localhost/StudioServer/

The log in screen appears.

Step 2. Log in using the following credentials:

User Name: woodwing
Password:
For Studio Server 10.43.0 and higher: the password for administrator ‘woodwing' that was randomly generated in step 8 'Creating Studio Server database tables'.
For Studio Server 10.42.0 and lower: 'ww’.

The main screen appears.

Troubleshooting: I am not able to log in

When you are not able to log in, for instance because of an incorrect configuration, access the Health Check page by entering the following URL in your Web browser:

http://<your server URL>/StudioServer/server/wwtest/testsuite.php

Continue with Step 2.

Step 1. Access the Health Check page:

Step 1a. In Studio Server, click Advanced in the Maintenance menu or on the Home page. A page with all advanced Maintenance features appears.

Step 1b. Click Health Check. The Health Check page appears.

Step 2. (Optional) In case not all licenses are activated yet, clear the check box for Licenses.

Step 3. (Optional) For those systems or features which are not installed yet (such as LDAP), clear their check boxes.

Step 4. Click Test.

The test(s) are executed and the results are displayed next to each test. They should all display “OK”.

Note: If a test fails, an error is displayed together with instructions for solving it. Follow the instructions and then run the test once more.

Step 12. Integrating Apache Solr

Solr is an open source enterprise search server based on the Lucene Java search library and is integrated by Studio Server to speed up the searching process.

Solr runs in a Java servlet container such as Tomcat or Jetty (included in the Solr distribution download).

Install and configure Solr as described in Integrating Solr in Studio Server.

Step 13. (Optional) Preview generation for additional file formats

Without installing additional components, Studio Server is capable of generating previews for images in JPG, PNG, or GIF format.

Support for additional image formats — such as PDF, TIFF and PSD — can be added by installing ImageMagick and/or Ghostscript.

For details, see Image preview generation in Studio Server 10.26 or lower.

Step 14. Configuring Studio Server

During the installation of Studio Server, the system was set up using default settings for use in a generic production environment. However, many more powerful features can be unlocked, mainly by making further changes to the configuration files, but also by making use of other technologies and third-party applications.

For an overview of the options that can be configured, use the following sources:

The list in the Configuration sections of the Studio Server contents page.
The comments in the configserver.php file. It lists many options, most of which can be easily implemented by simply un-commenting them.

Step 15. Setting File Storage settings

By modifying the file storage settings you control the way the data is stored, including the following aspects:

File name conventions
Performance
Files stored externally or locally

Follow the steps as described in About file storage in Studio Server.

Step 16. Reviewing security settings

By reviewing the security settings you verify and optionally control the way the stored data is secured (internally and externally), including the following aspects:

Passwords
User privileges
SSL

For more information, see Security considerations for Studio Server.

Step 17. Customizing the interface

Specific aspects of the Server and client applications can be customized to match the look and feel of your company environment, including localization, terminologies used, colors, and icons.

Refer to the articles listed on the contents page for Studio Server, Studio, and Studio for InDesign and InCopy.

Step 18. Setting up a Brand

Now that Studio Server itself is fully up and running, it is time to define your publications, set up Publication Channels, user accounts, access rights and more.

See Setting up a Brand in Studio Server.

Step 19. Connecting to WoodWing Cloud Services

Note: This step is mandatory when Studio Server is used in combination with working with Digital articles in Studio.

The Digital articles that are created in Studio make use of various resources such as Component Sets, styles, custom swatches, and so on. These resources are stored in a central location in the cloud in a system named WoodWing Cloud Services.

Studio needs access to these resources so that users can do the following:

Use the Digital editor
Create a Digital article
Create Component sets
Map components
Save swatches

Providing access is done by connecting Studio Server to WoodWing Cloud Services, as explained in Connecting Studio Servers and Assets Server to WoodWing Cloud Services.

Step 20. Planning periodic clean-up of the WebEdit folders for InDesign Server hosts

When installing a new InDesign Server host (or upgrading an existing InDesign Server host) to connect to Studio Server, the WebEdit folders should be cleaned periodically.

These folders are created by the InDesign Server preview script (provided by Studio Server) for each preview session.

When an InDesign Server host is busy, the WebEdit folder is created by another InDesign Server host.

To make maximum use of the InDesign Server capacity (and to not have the process delayed because of auto-cleaning operations) it is the responsibility of the system operator to periodically remove the WebEdit folders.

The more users are served, the more often this should happen. However, doing this too often can lead to inefficiencies. A good starting point is to clean the folder every 15 minutes and to remove all WebEdit folders in the InDesign Server Workspace folder that are older than one hour.

For Windows Server, two example scripts are provided: a clean-up script that does the actual cleaning and an installation script that makes it periodically run with help of the Windows Task Scheduler. The scripts can be found in the StudioServer/sdk/ids folder.

Further instructions can be found in the headers of the scripts.

Note: The scripts provided are a guideline for setting up the automated cleaning. Usage of it is at your own risk; support for these scripts is not provided by WoodWing.

The Workspace folder can be found in the following locations:

Windows: %USERDATA%\WwIdsWorkSpace
macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/WwIdsWorkSpace

Revisions

12 September 2024: Updated step 11 'Testing the Studio Server installation' by adding log in information for Studio Server 10.43.0 and higher.