This section explains where eZ Publish stores information that belongs to a site (not the system itself). A typical eZ Publish site consists of the following elements:

• Actual content
• Design related files
• Configuration files

Actual content is structured and stored inside a database. This is true for all content except for images and files, which are stored on the file system. The main reason for this is because the file system is much faster than the database when it comes to the storage and retrieval of large data chunks. Having the files on the file system allows the web-server to serve them directly without the need of going through the database. In addition, this technique makes it easier to use external tools to manipulate/scan/index the contents of the uploaded files. For example, the built in search engine is capable of using external utilities to index the contents of miscellaneous files (PDF, Word documents, Excel sheets, etc.). Having the files on the file system dramatically decreases the size of the database and thus makes it easier to copy and handle. Everything that is related to design (template files, CSS files, non content specific images, etc.) and configuration settings are also stored on the file system. A backup of an eZ Publish site must therefore contain both a dump of the database and a copy of the necessary files. The following illustration shows an overview of how the system makes use of the database and the file system to store the different elements of a site.

Storage overview