All OGC Web Services (OWS) (WMS, WFS, soon WCS) have several common configuration elements in the Web Admin Tool. Sometime we will allow one to configure these once and choose to inherit from the common configuration or not, but for now you must fill out each service separately. Mostly it is the meta information for the capabilities documents that each serve. If you are just evaluating GeoServer then the meta information need not be configured, but if you are serving GeoServer publically then we highly recommend that you take the time to fill these out appropriately, so that clients don't confuse your layers for the GeoServer defaults. Indeed the only way we will build a true GeoSpatial Web with search and all is if the meta information is filled out correctly. If you are only using one of the WFS and WMS then we recommend that you disable the one not being used in the Contents section. Each Service has a Contents and a Description. The Contents section controls options specific to each, and the Description section focuses on the Capabilities document's meta information.

Contents

The Contents section contains an Enabled check box. If you are not using the Web Map Server, or are using another piece of software to serve the other service, then this box should be unchecked so that users can not access it. The section also contains the Online Resource section. It is supposed to be the 'home page' of the service, a web page describing the WMS and/or WFS that GeoServer is providing. If you don't have one set up, you can leave this setting at the default, which is The GeoServer homepage.

Limiting the SRS listing

GeoServer natively supports almost 4000 spatial referencing systems (SRS). Therefore, the WMS GetCapabilities request, which contains a full listing of each supported SRS, is very long, and thus can cause issues with certain clients.

As a solution, GeoServer now allows the customization of that list, so as to display only the SRS that are wished to be displayed. This feature is new as of version 1.6.3.

This is set in the box entitled Limited Capabilities CRS List. In this box, you can input a comma-separated list of SRS codes, and only those codes will be retrieved.. Note that it is not necessary to prepend the "EPSG:" before each number; GeoServer will add that automatically.

A Web Map Server with only two SRS codes.

When finished, click Submit, then Apply and Save.

Now take a look at the WMS GetCapabilities document. Inside <WMT_MS_Capabilities> <Capability> <Layer>, you will see the following code:

<!--All supported EPSG projections-->
<SRS>EPSG:2000</SRS>
<SRS>EPSG:2001</SRS>
<SRS>EPSG:2002</SRS>
<SRS>EPSG:2003</SRS>
<SRS>EPSG:2004</SRS>
<SRS>EPSG:2005</SRS>
<SRS>EPSG:2006</SRS>
<SRS>EPSG:2007</SRS>
<SRS>EPSG:2008</SRS>
<SRS>EPSG:2009</SRS>
<SRS>EPSG:2010</SRS>
<SRS>EPSG:2011</SRS>
...

<!--Limited list of EPSG projections:-->
<SRS>EPSG:4326</SRS>
<SRS>EPSG:900913</SRS>

Description

The Description section represents the Service section of a Capabilities document, common across all OGC Web Services. From the WFS 1.0 spec:

Geoserver SVG Support

The Geoserver WMS supports SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) as an output format. To have the server return SVG, the Format parameter must be set to image/svg+xml. The following is an example of such a request (broken up over multiple lines for clarity).

http://localhost:8080/geoserver/wms?
       bbox=-130,24,-66,50&
       request=GetMap&
       layers=states&
       width=800&
       height=400&
       srs=EPSG:4326&
       styles=population&
       format=image/svg+xml

Configuration

Geoserver currently supports two SVG renderers. The first is known as the Simple SVG renderer. It has limited support for SLD styling. However it is very fast. The second is known as the Batik renderer (as it uses the Batik SVG Framework). It has full support for SLD styling , but is slow.

To configure which renderer to use, navigate to the WMS Rendering configuration page: Config -> WMS -> Rendering.

On the Rendering configuration, select the radio button for the appropriate SVG renderer and Submit.

Anti Aliasing support

Not shown in the screenshot above, but on the same Rendering page, as of 1.3.0-RC5 there is a checkbox for 'Anti Aliasing'. Anti Aliasing is A technique for making edges appear smoother and eliminating "jaggies" by filling in the edges of an object with pixels that are between the object's color and the background color. Anti-aliasing creates the illusion of smoother lines and smoother selections. Turning on Anti-aliasing will generally make your maps look nicer. But will increase the size of the images returned, and will take a slight bit longer. Note that if you are overlaying the anti-aliased map on top of others it can sometimes backfire with transparencies, since it mixes with the colors behind and can create a 'halo' effect.

Watermarking

Watermarking is new as of 1.6.3. More info