The pages you want to use for preview must be set up as a Web application module on the ATG Business Control Center (management) server. Typically you want to use the same application that is running on the production server for previewing. So, for example, if you have an ATG Commerce store in a module called MyCommerceStore that is running on the production server, you add a MyCommerceStore module to the ATG Business Control Center server and configure it for previewing.
The ATG Content Administration documentation explains how to set up versioned instances of your application modules on the ATG Content Administration server, which is the same server that is used for the ATG Business Control Center. Following our example, you should already have a module called MyCommerceStoreVer on the ATG Business Control Center server. This module has a dependency on the MyCommerceStore module. Assuming that the MyCommerceStore module is exactly the same as the module on the production server, the Web application that you will use for preview will therefore already be installed on the ATG Business Control Center server.
Configure the Web application for startup on the ATG Business Control Center server so that when you enter the application’s context root as a URL in a browser, the home page of the application is rendered. Note that if the application requires a login, logging in does not necessarily need to work. The preview logic allows the pages to be previewed without requiring a login.
For preview, you typically do not need the entire application on the ATG Business Control Center server to be functional. For an ATG Commerce application, for example, the checkout process usually does not need to be fully operational. As long as the pages you want to use for preview can be accessed and rendered correctly, you do not need to get the rest of the application working. Make sure, however, that all resources referenced by your preview pages are available on the ATG Business Control Center server.
