2. Overview

When talking about CoreMedia Multi-Site, it is a valid assumption that it is about translation, that is, delivering content in many different languages. But CoreMedia Multi-Site is more than that.

CoreMedia Multi-Site not only supports translation of content, but also localization, which is, that you may deliver sites having different languages and different structures. For example, you may want to add an additional banner for Thanksgiving holiday in your American site which is missing in all other sites.

CoreMedia believes, that with the provided model, you will be able to easily manage content in many different languages, while having the flexibility to adapt your site to local needs. You may decide to translate content on your own, or you will be able to let translation agencies do the translation for you.

CoreMedia Multi-Site will enable you addressing your customers with a customized web presence adapted to each country, while on the other hand providing an easy way to manage and adapt these customizations.

The following paragraphs give you a first introduction into the main concepts of the multi-site feature.

Master and Derived

Figure 2.1. Master content and Derived content

For each language you want to present on your website, there is a dedicated set of content items, each annotated with the language they belong to. Content items which represent the same content but in different languages, are linked to each other. These links are annotated by version identifiers, so that you will always know, if you need to translate a content again, because its sibling got updated. Later in this manual we will refer to these relations as master and derived as for a better overview, these siblings are organized hierarchically.

Sites

Each of those content sets is kept in a dedicated folder, so that you will have a folder for all English contents, a folder for all Arabic contents, and another one for all German contents. Each of these folders represent a site.

Workflows

To transfer a content set from English to Arabic, you will use CoreMedia workflows. These automatic processes will guide you through the translation process and assist, for example, not to forget to translate a linked content, which is referred from the current content you are going to translate.

These workflows will also take care of adapting properties of your contents, which are not to be translated, but should be changed, as soon as the original content changed. Most prominent example are links. When you add a link to your content and you are going to translate the content, the link will be added to your target document automatically.