The term locale refers to the concept of translation and localization. Thus, it is in general a combination of a country and a language. So if the country Switzerland requires contents to be available in English, Italian, German and Romansh, four locales have to be defined.

The locale is represented as IETF BCP 47 language tag (Tags for Identifying Languages).

A site is a cohesive collection of web pages in a single locale, sometimes referred to as localized site. Technically, a site consists of:

A master site is a site other localized sites are derived from. A localized site might itself take the role of a master site for other derived sites. This reflects the need that, for example, your localized Canadian site (which is in English) needs another localized variant in French.

A derived site is a site, which receives localizations from its master site. A derived site might itself take the role of a master site for other derived sites.

All contents of a site are bundled in one dedicated folder. A typical example of a site folder is:

/Sites/MySite/Canada/French

A site indicator is the central configuration object for a site. It is an instance of the content type CMSite. It explicitly configures:

It also implicitly defines the root of the site folder.

The site's home page is the main entry point for all visitors of a site. Technically it is also the main entry point to calculate the default layout and the contents of a site.

The site identifier needs to be unique among all sites. It can be used to reference a site reliably also outside the CMS for example in configuration files.

The site name is the name of a master site and all derived sites. A derived site inherits the site name from its master site and must not change it.

Members of a site manager group are typically responsible for one localized site. The recommendation is to have one dedicated group for each site with appropriate permissions applied for the site folder.

Responsible means that they take care of the contents of that site and that they accept translation tasks for that site. If a site manager is allowed to also trigger translation tasks from the master site to their site, they need to be added to the translation manager role.

While the Site Manager Groups are typically local to their site, thus represent the horizontal layer, CoreMedia Content Cloud also introduces a vertical layer referred to as global site manager. As a consequence the members of the horizontal layer are sometimes referred to as local site managers.

Global site managers have an overview over all sites while local site managers focus on their sites with additionally required access to the particular master site for translation processes.

Editors in the translation manager role are in charge of triggering translation workflows either from or to a site.

Most of the time used in context of content variants, variants refer to all localized versions within the complete hierarchy of master and their derived sites (including the root master itself)