The ATG platform includes a number of features to facilitate creation of multisite applications. These features are of two main types:
1. Data sharing mechanisms that allow sites to share commerce and personalization resources, such as catalog items, shopping carts, orders, search results, promotions, scenarios, and targeters.
2. Administrative tools for creating and managing sites.
Data Sharing
A key aspect of multisite support is the sharing of data. For example, if two sites share a gift list, a customer can include products from both sites on his or her gift list. This is much more convenient for the customer than having separate gift lists for each site.
ATG provides a number of mechanisms for sharing data across sites. Using ATG’s multisite support, your sites can share:
1. Personalization tools, such as scenarios and targeters.
2. Catalog data, such as categories, products, and SKUs.
3. Standard commerce facilities, such as shopping carts, promotions, orders, gift lists, and product comparisons.
4. Search results.
5. These elements can be shared across all sites, a subset of sites, or be unique to each site.
6. Data sharing is managed by a variety of mechanisms. Primary among these is the use of site groups.
Site Groups
A site group comprises a subset of the sites in a multisite environment. Site groups provide a way to logically group sites to manage data sharing between those sites. A sharing group consists of a site group and the data the sites share.
For example, suppose your multisite environment initially consists of two affiliated sites, Site A and Site B, that share a shopping cart. These sites would be defined as a site group. When you define this site group, you specify that the sites share a shopping cart. These sites plus the shopping cart constitute a sharing group.
Administrative Tools
ATG’s multisite support is designed to make it as easy as possible to create and administer sites. To facilitate this process, the following tools are provided:
1. Site Repository
2. Site Administration
3. Site categories
Site Repository
Many aspects of multisite support are managed through the Site Repository (/atg/multisite/SiteRepository). This repository stores information about each site in a multisite environment -- the site name, default URL, etc. A site listed in this repository is called a registered site.
The Site Repository determines the set of properties for a site. A number of properties are included by default, but a system administrator can add site properties by modifying the repository definition.
Note that if you have only a single site, you do not need to register it. If you subsequently add a second site, though, you will need to register both -- you cannot have a mix of registered and unregistered sites. In other words, multisite support requires that you register all of your sites. If you have already created an unregistered site and choose to register it, you may need to make some coding changes. See Coding a Multisite Application.
Site Administration
To register and administer sites in a multisite environment, ATG provides the Site Administration utility. Site Administration is available through the Business Control Center, and is designed for business users. Site Administration enables business users to configure new sites, adjust the settings of existing sites, and disable sites that are no longer needed. Users can also create site groups, by specifying the sites in the group and the data they share. The settings specified in Site Administration are stored in the Site Repository.
Site Categories
When you create a site in the Site Administration utility, you select the site category for the site. For example, depending on how your system is configured, you might be able to select a Microsite or Country Store category. It is possible to create any number of categories, which may differ by the types of sites they are intended for.
Site categories are created by system administrators. To create a site category, the system administrator creates a site template item in the Site Repository. The site template item defines the editing environment in Site Administration for sites that use the corresponding site category. The template makes it possible to:
1. Control the grouping of properties in Site Administration.
2. Specify non-default editors for properties. For example, the standard editor for a text property is a text box where a user can enter an arbitrary string. A site template can replace the editor for a specific text property with a drop-down menu that has a set of preconfigured options.
3. Suppress the display of certain properties, so that they cannot be set.
4. Hard-code the values of certain properties.
