Create a site

In Sites, you create a site from an existing site template by using the Create site flow or by duplicating an existing site, and adapting its content as needed.

Note

To create and manage sites and site collections, you must have the Admin or the Sitecore Client Site Managing role. Contact your system administrator to request the access rights as needed.

When you create a site, an analytics identifier is assigned to it. This gives you access to analytics about how website visitors interact with your pages, and it lets you to personalize site pages.

Create a site

To create a new site from a template:

  1. In Sites, in the upper-right corner, click Create > Site.

    Note

    If the current view is filtered by a collection, the site is created inside that collection.

  2. Select one of the available templates and click Next.

    XM Cloud comes with two ready-made templates:

    • Empty site – this template includes a Home page containing three empty placeholders.

    • Basic site – this template includes a Home and About page with a set of components, a page design, and partial designs for a header and footer.

    Note

    Both templates are preconfigured to help you get analytics data and personalize the site (an analytics identifier is automatically generated based on the site's name).

    You can create additional site templates in Content Editor.

  3. Enter a name, and optionally a description, for the website.

  4. If you're creating a site from within an existing collection, ignore this step.

    In the Collection field, do one of the following:

    select an existing site collection. Or create a new collection by typing a name for the collection and then clicking Create [name of collection].

    • Use the drop-down list to select an existing site collection.

    • Enter a name for a new collection and click Create [name of collection].

    The Collection field that appears when you create a website in XM Cloud

  5. To enable languages for your website, click the Languages field, then select all the languages you want in the list of languages supported by Sitecore. If the languages you selected aren't yet enabled in the environment, they will be enabled automatically.

  6. Select the default language you want to use for your website.

  7. Click Create site. A progress indicator shows you when the process is complete. After the new site is created, it is shown in Sites in the chosen collection.

Duplicate a site

You can create a site by duplicating an existing one. When you duplicate a site, its content items - such as pages and images, folder structure, and links - are copied. Most of the settings are also copied, but you can change those later.

To duplicate a site:

  1. In Sites, navigate to the desired site and click > Duplicate.

  2. In the Duplicate site dialog, you can give a new name to the duplicated site, and add a description.

  3. Click Duplicate. A progress indicator shows you when the process is complete. After the duplicate site is created, it is shown in Sites in the chosen collection.

Share a site

Within a collection, it is possible to share a site's items with all the other sites of the environment. A shared site acts as a "master" site. This means that the content items that you create and configure there (such as components, partial designs, and page designs) can be consumed by other sites from the same environment.

For example, a marketer creates partial designs relevant for all sites, and instead of having to maintain them as individual instances, they save their work in a shared site, making the partial designs available to all content authors.

Example of a collection including a master site sharing its data sources with all the other sites

To share one site's items with all other sites in the collection:

  1. In the collection of your choice, on the thumbnail of the site you want to share, click Action menu > Settings.

  2. On the settings General tab, go to the Site sharing section and click Share site.

From then on, when working with any site from that collection in the Pages editor, you will be able to access all the items from the master site, in addition to the items specific to the site you are working on.

You can later choose to unshare a site by unchecking the Site sharing option. In this case, the data sources, presentation, and settings will no longer be available for use from the other sites of the collection. However, everything that was used while the site was shared will remain as it is on the existing pages, and the links created previously will not be broken.

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