Multisite example - Two sites with different domains

This page contains an example of how to configure multiple sites to manage different websites mapped to different domains.

Example scenario: Eric has a store where he sells comic books and vinyl records. He wants different sites for his products. Comic books are his main business.

Since version 3.0.0 of the Multisite module, site definitions are no longer configured in the config folder of this module, but in the sites subfolder of any module.

You can configure a site in a YAML definition (preferred) or directly in the JCR Configuration app.

Setting up domains

Eric has registered two domains: one for comics and one for vinyl. Since comics is his primary business, he registered the domain www.best-comics.net for the comics first, so this will be his main domain.

Type Author Public

comics

author.best-comics.net

www.best-comics.net

vinyl

author.best-comics.net

www.best-vinyl.net

Use only one domain - a subdomain of the main domain - to access the author instance (see Magnolia setup and domains).

Setting up content

Eric has created a lot of pages. When simplified, his website workspace has a structure with two pages in root directory as shown below. The two pages act as the home pages for the two different websites (both have many subpages not shown here).

Page Title

comics

Best comics

vinyl

Best vinyl

Setting up site definitions

This table shows the configuration of the site definitions required by Eric.

Site definitions required by user Eric

Note the following points which reflect common practice and the scenario:

  • We have a main site definition - here it is comics-site - that defines a prototype.

  • The fallback site:

    • Extends the main site by using @extends=../comics-site.

    • mappings does not inherit from the main site because we use @extends=override.

Removing unwanted virtualURIMapping on public context

Request the URL www.best-comics.net. If you are redirected to the admin login page (www.best-comics.net/.magnolia/admincentral), the public context contains a virtualURIMapping. This URI mapping is fine for an author context but not for the public context.

To remove the mapping:

Use the Find Bar to search for virtualURIMapping in the Configuration app.

On a standard Magnolia bundle, you typically find the following node: /modules/ui-admincentral/virtualURIMapping.

Virtual URI mapping in the Configuration app

Delete the node /modules/ui-admincentral/virtualURIMapping/default.

Checking the access URLs

Test the setup. Make sure you have pages shown in Setting up content in both the author and public instances.

Public instance

/comics

www.best-comics.net

Best comics site on Public instance

/vinyl

www.best-vinyl.net

Best vinyl site on Public instance

Author instance

/comics

author.best-comics.net/comics-site

Best comics site on Author instance

/vinyl

author.best-comics.net/vinyl-site

Best vinyls site on Author instance

To access the root page of a site in the author instance, which is accessed on a domain that is not mapped to a site, use the following URL:

<protocol>://<author-domain>/<context>/<``site-definition-name>

Note that Magnolia creates these links automatically, for example, when you open the Preview tab in the author instance.

Imagine that Eric wants to advertise his vinyl records store from the comic book store and vice versa. So he creates links from pages on the comics-site to the vinyl-site and vice versa.

Use the link component from mtk (mtk2:components/link) in your page template to add links.

In this example, on the root page of the comics-site we add a link to the root page of the vinyl-site.

When Magnolia resolves links in a multisite context, it creates links that start with the domain:

Link on the Public instance

Managing cross-site access

You can access a site using the site-definition-name. The full pattern of this kind of URL looks like this:

<protocol>://<domain>:<port>/<context>/<site-definition-name>

This only works if the domain is different from the domain which is mapped to the site of the given site-definition-name.

On the author instance

This way of accessing a site and its pages is necessary in the author instance. It is the usual way to access a site in the author instance, since the domain of the author instance usually is different from the domains mapped to the public instance and mapped to the sites. In this scenario, the access URLs of the sites on author are:

  • author.best-comics.net/comics-site

  • author.best-comics.net/vinyl-site

On the public instance - preventing it

Following the above URL pattern, you can access the sites in the public instance using:

  • www.best-comics.net/vinyl-site

  • www.best-vinyl.net/comics-site

Note that the first URL accesses the vinyl site via the comic site domain and the second URL accesses the comic site via the vinyl site domain.

This type of access should be avoided in a public instance because:

  • The same content is served from different URLs. This has a negative impact in the context of SEO (Search engine optimization) and may decrease the Google ranking.

  • Content rendered by the wrong site may appear with wrong styling or may have missing web resources due to different themes.

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