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6.5.1.2. Sites Structure

CoreMedia DXP 8 assumes that your localized sites are all derived from one master site. The site hierarchy might be nested, thus a site derived from the master site again might have derivatives. You can trigger the localization process from your master site, directly derived sites will adapt and forward changes to their derived sites.

The examples below refer to the default configuration which comes with CoreMedia Blueprint. To adapt the structure to your needs you have to configure the SiteModel - see also Section 6.5.3.1, “Site Model and Sites Service”.

Multi-Site Folder Structure

All elements belonging to a site structure are placed in one dedicated folder. In this folder you will find the master site as well as all derived localized sites.

Another set of master and derived sites could be created in parallel to that site following the same concept.

  • /Sites/

    • MySite/

      • United States/

        • English/ master
        • Spanish/ derived from U.S. English

      • Canada/

        • English/ derived from U.S. English
        • French/ derived from Canadian English

    • MyOtherSite/ another master site structure

Example 6.18. Multi-Site Folder Structure Example


The folder structure of the master site and its target sites should be kept equal to avoid the automatic recreation of removed or renamed folders during the translation workflow.

In addition to this common aspects for all sites might be placed outside this folder structure. For details see Section 6.3.1, “Folder and User Rights Concept”.

Site Folder Structure

The central entry point into the site folder is the site indicator. It points implicitly to the site's root folder (as it needs to be located at the same folder hierarchy depth among all sites in the system) and points explicitly to the site's home page.

Assuming that your site indicator is always placed in some folder like Navigation your site folder structure may look like this:

  • MySite/

    • United States/

      • English/

        • Navigation/

          • MySite [Site] site indicator

          • MySite site's home page

          • ...

Example 6.19. Site Folder Structure Example


While the above describes the mandatory folder structure for a site, there are additional structures which adhere to the proposed separation of concerns in Section 6.3.1, “Folder and User Rights Concept”, thus within a site you can have several user roles taking care of different aspects of the site as there are:

  • Editorial content: For example, articles, images, collections etc. This is the real content of a site that is rendered to the web page. They are located in folders Editorial, Pictures and Videos.

  • Navigation content: Channels that span the navigation tree and provide context information, as well as their page grids (see also Section 6.3.2, “Navigation and Contexts”). These contents are located in a folder named Navigation.

  • Technical content: Site specific, technical documents, like actions, settings, view types, etc. They can be found in folder named Options.
Site Interdependence

Having a site derived from its master you will have two layers of interdependence:

  1. The site indicator points to its master site indicator.

  2. Each derived document points to its master annotated by the version of the master when the derived document retrieved its last update from the master. This information is used in the update process when a new master version requires its derived contents to be translated again.

  3. A site indicator inherits the site name from its master. If a site indicator has no master it has to define the site name, which will be used for all derived sites.

Multi-Site Interdependence

Figure 6.26. Multi-Site Interdependence


The master property is configured as weak link by default. Thus, you might publish derived sites before (or without) publishing the master site.

Modifying the Site Structure

Whenever possible, the structure of a site should not be changed after it has been set up initially. In particular, you should not:

  • Change the id of a site. If you do so, you must at least re-index its entire master site, if any. See Section 5.2, “Configuring the CAE Feeder” in CoreMedia Search Manual for details on the re-indexing procedure. However, the site id might also be stored in other places that a simple re-indexing will not update.

  • Move a content to a different site. If you do so, you must at least update the master links of the affected contents to point into the master site of the new site.

  • Change the locale of a site. If you do so, you must at least update the locale stored in each individual content of the site.

  • Change the master site of a site. If you do so, you must at least update the master links of all contents in the site.

[Caution]Caution

After significant changes of the site structure, you should run the cm validate-multisite tool to detect inconsistencies in the content. See Section 3.14.1.12, “Validate Multi-Site” in CoreMedia Content Server Manual for details.

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