Enable Administrators to Delete a Channel

Info: This feature is available in brXM version 11.1.0 and later.

Overview

Administrators can configure a publication channel as deletable. Once configured, users with administrator privileges can delete the channel in the Experience manager.

Deleting a Channel

The Experience manager allows administrators to delete channels. This operation is permanent. After confirming deletion, you cannot restore the channel except by restoring a backup.

To prevent accidental or unauthorized deletion, the following safeguards are in place:

Only users with administrator privileges can delete a channel.
Only channels explicitly marked as deletable can be deleted.
Projects can subscribe to the BeforeChannelDeleteEvent to implement additional safeguards. For details, see Respond to a Before Delete Channel Event.

Scope of Deletion

When you delete a channel, the Experience manager removes only the HST configuration associated with that channel. Content is not deleted. If you need to remove content related to the deleted channel, you must do so manually or by subscribing to the BeforeChannelDeleteEvent.

The following HST configuration elements are deleted:

The hst:site node.
All hst:mount nodes that reference the deleted channel, across all virtual host groups.*
The hst:configuration node referenced by the hst:site node, including its preview copy. If another HST configuration node inherits from this node, only the preview copy is deleted.
If you use the Relevance feature, all goals bound to a URL of the deleted channel are deleted. Any experiments bound to a deleted goal are also deleted.
If you use the Projects feature, all branches created for the channel are deleted. You can only delete a channel if the core is selected. If a branch is selected, deletion is not possible.

* If any of these hst:mount nodes contain child mount nodes, the deletion will fail before the BeforeChannelDeleteEvent is published.

Marking a Channel as Deletable

By default, channels cannot be deleted. To enable deletion, set the hst:deletable Boolean property to true on the hst:channel node:

/hst:hst:
  /hst:configurations:
    /mychannel-preview:
      /hst:workspace:
        /hst:channel:
          hst:deletable: true

You can set the deletable flag in several ways:

Bootstrap the flag as part of your configuration.
Include it in a blueprint so that all channels created from the blueprint are deletable.
Set it using the Hippo Console.
Apply it with a custom Updater script.

If you add the deletable flag to existing channels that have a preview copy, set the flag on both the live and preview nodes.