What is multisite?

A multisite approach means managing many websites within a single CMS and sharing content between them. Businesses require multiple websites for many reasons, from localizing content to specific countries or regions, to creating specialized sites for unique brands or product lines. Many companies have a multitude of audiences they cater to, and multiple websites gives them the opportunity to provide customer-oriented information for each specific market segment.

The approach also lets businesses enter new markets and better differentiate their brands from the competition. Optimizing the content that your audiences see by creating various websites is crucial for providing better digital experiences. Localized content, therefore, makes your brand more personal, and has a greater chance of engaging worldwide audiences.

The challenges of multisite management

While multiple sites may be necessary for most multinational companies, there are many reasons why it's difficult for marketing teams to manage. Without the right tooling, multisite management becomes inefficient and expensive. Here are some of the common challenges companies face when delivering content to multiple websites:

Keeping content in sync

Ensuring unified messaging across individual websites is challenging for companies that use a multisite approach. Suppose there's a change to any high-value content on one site. In that case, it has to be replicated on each site, or you could be left with inaccurate or inconsistent information. Poor messaging can negatively impact the digital experience and, in turn, a brand's reputation. Many CMSs, however, need more capacity to keep high-value content in sync automatically in a multisite environment.

Multiple sites without syncing different types of content is a surefire way to end up with inconsistencies and disjointed branding. Implementing a robust headless content platform can alleviate these challenges by providing a centralized system for managing and distributing content across multiple websites. With a headless content platform, companies can ensure that high-value content is consistent and up-to-date across all sites, minimizing the risk of inaccuracies and improving the overall digital experience.

Content that doesn't have to be localized

Just because a company has separate websites for different geographical regions, doesn't mean every content piece will be unique to each site. Some content won't be relevant to specific regions, or it's already been localized and publishing again will result in redundant information. In other cases, the same content can be used in multiple regions like the U.S., U.K. and Australia without any modifications. Managing which content should and should not be published across various websites can take time and effort.

Adding new sites quickly

Multisite management in headless scenarios

A multisite content management system plays a vital role in headless architecture, where flexibility, scalability, and omnichannel experiences are crucial. With a huge team and dynamic content, businesses can leverage this system to manage and maintain multiple websites or applications from a central unit.

By integrating digital assets into the mix, such as images, videos, and other media, organizations can create distinct and visually appealing digital sites tailored to different markets, regions, or brands using a visual editor. This process is made even more powerful in a headless architecture, where a shared content repository, powerful APIs, and infrastructure enable streamlined content updates, consistent branding, and reduced development effort across multiple sites.

The use of a headless content management system allows businesses to efficiently handle dynamic content and deliver personalized experiences across various sites. Leveraging user data and advanced targeting capabilities can deliver tailored content to specific audiences, improving engagement and conversion rates. Combining a visual editor and a flexible content model empowers marketers to efficiently manage and customize content for different platforms while ensuring consistent branding and engaging experiences.

Furthermore, localization becomes more seamless by efficiently managing and delivering language and region-specific content across multiple sites and mobile applications. This enhances the overall user experience and enables businesses to effectively reach their target audience in different regions, contributing to their success in the global market.

With the pace of digital innovation, companies need to remain agile by adopting a headless approach. This means ensuring quick time to market and release of new product lines. Companies that venture into new markets or digital products require specialized websites tailored to specific audiences. Without tools facilitating content reuse and rapid website deployment, maintaining consistent corporate branding across their digital presence becomes challenging.

Multisite management use cases

Multisite management in headless scenarios unlocks endless possibilities across industries like ecommerce, media, hospitality, and higher education, offering streamlined collaboration, efficient content deployment, and seamless scalability.

Ecommerce

A retail company with multiple brands or regional online stores with great user interfaces can utilize multisite management to create separate sites for each brand or region while sharing a centralized product catalog, inventory management, and user authentication. This allows for targeted marketing, localized content, and streamlined operations

Media and publishing

Media organizations can leverage multisite management to manage multiple websites or digital publications under one umbrella. Each site can cater to specific topics, genres, or target audiences. At the same time, content sharing, user authentication, and centralized analytics provide efficiency and consistency across the network.

Hospitality and tourism

Hotels and travel companies can benefit from multisite management by creating separate websites for each property or destination. They can maintain content consistent while branding, tailoring content, and promotions specific to each location. Centralized booking systems, reviews, and customer data integration enhance the overall customer experience.

Higher education

Universities and educational institutions often have multiple departmental websites or campus-specific sites. Multisite management enables centralized control over branding, content sharing, event management, and student information while allowing individual departments or campuses to customize their sites.

These use cases demonstrate the versatility of multisite management in headless scenarios, allowing organizations to create and manage multiple websites or single-page applications efficiently, tailor content to specific audiences, maintain brand consistency, and drive personalized user experiences across the digital landscape.

Magnolia multilingual structures

Managing content across different sites or digital platforms in multiple languages requires a robust and efficient approach.

Magnolia’s headless architecture provides organizations the flexibility and efficiency to manage centralized translation, content sharing and reuse, and optimized user experiences across different languages by offering the following multilanguage structures:

• Single tree: Magnolia can store multilanguage content in a single JCR (Content Repository API for Java) content node. This means you only need one site hierarchy. A single tree stores each translation as a property under the same parent node.

• Multiple trees: This structure consists of separate website trees, one for each language. One site tree for English, another for German, etc. This effectively duplicates some pages but completely allows local custom content.

• Mixed tree: This structure is a mix where one tree is multilingual, and others are monolingual. Use the multilingual tree for the international sections of the site, and for each region or language, merge a monolingual tree below the main tree.

Introducing Magnolia Live Copy

Magnolia's Live Copy feature allows you to reuse content across multiple websites easily. For complicated multisite setups, you can create sites that reference a master website and have the same code structure. You only have to manage the master site, and all reference sites will update automatically - reducing the required effort to keep content for multiple websites in sync.

Have a look at this 3-minute video walktrough to get a quick overview of our Live Copy feature:

These are some of the key capabilities of the Live Copy feature:

Create new sites

Magnolia makes it straightforward to launch new sites from a master copy. With the click of a button, you can create a live copy that will automatically sync with the main website whenever changes are made. This lets companies remain agile and quickly respond to an evolving marketplace. Using the Live Copy feature, you'll promptly provide specialized content to new audiences by launching new websites fast and staying ahead of the competition.

Sync content automatically

Each piece of content has a reference link to the master copy, and even if you move content, the links remain intact. These links ensure that reference sites sync with the master site automatically. If there needs to be changes to the reference site, specific content can be unlinked and modified freely.

Changes to the master site will not trigger content updates that override the unlinked content unless you decide to reattach it. This lets marketers localize content while retaining the content models of the leading global website, which is especially useful when building multilingual sites.

Maintain flexibility

Sometimes you don't want to detach content from the master copy completely but only edit small sections of the content. In this case, you can override specific properties of the reference copy down to the granular level. The content will automatically sync to the central location, while the relevant sections you override will remain protected. Overriding creates efficiency in managing partially localized content.

This feature makes it easier to localize content for more similar regions that differ only by dialects - like modifying content produced in the U.S. for an Australian audience.