Create a new Project

Projects are the basis of your application. Every application is created within a project. So to get started on a new application involves the creation of a new project. WEM provides a step-by-step wizard to create a new Project from scratch. On existing/copied projects you can change all those settings in the respective Project Settings and Portal Settings pages.

1. Project name and workspace

When you click on [+ New Project], you are presented with the following overlay, which is the start of a Wizard:

Create Project Wizard Step 1

1. Enter your Project name;

2. Select type of project:

   1. Web application with shared database (1 storage for all portals in this project);

   2. Web application with separate databases (each portal its own storage);

   3. Native App project (Android and iOS apps).

3. Select an existing workspace or create a new workspace.

NOTE: you can only specify the storage strategy (shared or separate), at the time when you create the project. This setting cannot be changed once the project is previewed or published - because either of those actions will create the database container based on the chosen strategy - and, once the container has been created, it cannot be changed.

Later on, you can make a copy of a project and at that time select a different storage strategy so you get another project with the same logic, but a different storage strategy.

Click the [Next] button to go to the next step.

2. Localization

Create Project Wizard Step 2

• Select your Default Language (this can be changed later per portal);

• Select your Time zone mode (this can be changed later per portal);

  • Option [From Client IP Address] will lookup the timezone based on the runtime user's IP-address using a lookuptable with known registered ip-address ranges and their known timezones. This may be affected by IP-addresses provided by international providers or free-wifi connectors, and it may be that some ip-addresses are not available in the WEM lookup table if they have been added recently; With this option you can use the UTC timezone (and related functions) to store specific date+time values, and choose to display them as local time to the enduser - based on their timezone.

  • Option [Fixed] will give you the option to select one specific timezone which will be used for any and all date-time values (like the technical time function Now()).

Click the [Next] button to go to the next step.

3. Domain names

Create Project Wizard Step 3

The settings in the red box of the above image are Kubernetes runtime specific settings only available for Kubernetes environments.

Portals published to Runtime (staging/live) have to be made accessible using a hostname, the address you enter in the browser's address bar. WEM offers a few choices here:

• Hosting Zone: based on certain settings for your workspace, you may have multiple hosting zones available. Standard hosting zone is the Shared Cloud environment in the European zone. Other options may be the shared cloud in the APAC zone, or any private cloud which is made available to your workspace.

• Hostnames: the wizard automatically generates a hostname combining your project - and portal name with the base-hostname from the selected Hosting Zone, for the Shared Europe zone that is staging.wem.io and live.wem.io. These domains already exist and are defined with a wildcard in DNS settings, which makes it easy to just use any (unique) name without having to change DNS settings.

• Any portal needs 1 hostname per runtime (staging/live), but can have more! It will just be a different name (address to enter in the browser address bar) for the same portal, but it can be useful. Click on [Add hostname] to add more hostnames.

add hostname

• Adding a hostname using the Hosting Zone's base-url will be operational with SSL-certificate directly after publishing using automated LetsEncrypt Certificates .

• Adding your own custom hostname will require additional changes in the DNS management of the custom domain - this is out of WEM scope.

Read this forum post about linking your own custom hostname to your WEM portal and get SSL-certificates

Click the [Next] button to go to the next step.

4. Select a design

Create Project Wizard Step 4

The final step in the Wizard, is to select the Design Template which will be used as the Layout for your Portal. The Design Template will arrange the position of your navigation menus, header and footer options and the standard fonts and colors. WEM provides a range of pre-defined Design Templates, and each of them has some (or many) additional settings to change to your needs.

The [Customizable Main] Design Template is the template with the most options you can modify yourself (within limits) and is becoming the most-used Template.

If the available collection of Design Templates does not fit your needs, there are possibilities to get your own Custom Design Template. A WEM Design Template is a complex collection of files and definitions that have to be put together correctly. If you want to manage your own Design Templates, you need to have profound knowledge of LESS, CSS, HTML at least - but there are WEM Partners who can assist if you do not have this knowledge available.

Click the [Create project] button, and your New Project will be created with the provided settings.