The SXA items in the Content Editor

Current version: 10.1

SXA defines sites as Sitecore items. This topic describes the SXA tenant, site and custom items in Sitecore.

The tenant items

When you use the Tenant creation wizard to quickly set up your tenant and site, by default SXA creates templates, themes, and media content, with the paths stored on the tenant item you just created.

The tenant items.

The site items

The Site creation wizard generates the structure of the site, not just a home item, but also a Data folder for shared content, a Media item for all site-specific media items, and a Settings and Presentation node for configuration and presentation details that you define at the site level.

The site items.

The site folder has the following subfolders:

  • Home - contains the site pages and the presentation elements that can be displayed in overlay windows.

    The Home items.
  • Media - shows a scoped view of the Media Library that includes all the media items available for the site, such as images, animations, movies, PDFs, and so on. The media items do not exist physically in this folder but are references to the Media Library folders assigned to the site.

    The media items.
  • Data - contains the data sources that can be reused across multiple pages within the website. The Data folder provides a location for shared data source content at the site level, and organizes this content by rendering type. Only the components that you selected in the Site creation wizard will have a Data container folder.

    The Data items.
  • <Site> Dictionary - adds translations for Scriban template. Includes the site name to distinguish from the general Sitecore dictionary.

  • Presentation - contains settings and presentation details for features that you selected when you created the site.

    The Presentation items.

    The following table describes the items in the Presentation subfolder:

    Item

    Description

    Available Renderings

    Lists the renderings that are available to editors in the Experience Editor.

    SXA lets you change the structure of the components within the toolbox. This can be convenient when you want to move a component category that you use often to the top of the list or if you want to change the order of the components within the category.

    Cache Settings

    Set caching options for specific components. On the Home tab, click Component Cache Settings, to create your cache settings.

    Event Types

    Event Types is a configurable drop-down list that enables you to select available event types within event lists.

    Layout Service

    Specify additional JSON Rendering Variants that you can use to formulate the output of components provided by the Layout Service.

    Page Designs

    Create and assign page designs. This item contains the settings to change the optimization settings for a specific site.

    Partial Designs

    Contains your custom partial designs. Create and change a partial design by modifying this item's children.

    Placeholder Settings

    Set placeholder restrictions for your layout placeholders. These restrictions are applied on all pages in the site. This item is also a container for placeholder restriction items that you can assign to dynamic placeholders in Experience Editor.

    POI Types

    Add your points of interest.

    Rendering Variants

    Lists all components within your site that support variants. You can add component variants to the subfolders of this item.

    Styles

    SXA comes with preset styles for renderings. You can add, edit, and delete styles. In the Style section of each style you can add the renderings that can use that style.

  • Settings - contains configuration details.

    The Settings items.

    The following table describes the items in the Settings subfolder:

    Item

    Description

    Browser Title

    By default, the Title field is used as the browser title. To use a different field, specify a dedicated title field here. SXA also lets you define a page title prefix and suffix for each site.

    Creative Exchange Storages

    Configure Creative Exchange to specify the export and import options. You can also configure the path to store exported sites.

    Datasource Configurations

    SXA lets you use your own data template with a built-in SXA component. If you insert a datasource configuration and select the component, you can change the datasource template used by that component as well as override a number of its default settings.

    Default links

    The link component lets you add links to, for example, a blog page partial design to go to the next or previous article without having to link to that article explicitly. Default links has two sub-items: Hierarchy and Journey.

    The Hierarchy item has the following sub-items:

    • Next sibling - links to the next sibling item according to how the items appears in the content tree.

    • Parent item - links to the parent item of the current item.

    • Previous sibling - links to the previous sibling item according to how the items appear in the content tree.

    The Journey item has the following sub-item:

    • Previously visited item - links to the page previously visited and is dependent on Sitecore.Analytics.Tracker.

      Note

      Does not work with XM topology.

    Facets

    Add facets used by the search components.

    HTML Snippets

    Contains the HTML snippets. The HTML snippet is a meta component that you can add to the Metadata Partial Design.

    Item Queries

    Create custom queries for list components.

    Maps Provider

    Store the Maps authorization key

    Privacy Warning

    Configure a privacy warning. For example, you can specify the type of warning and set the pages where you do not want to show the privacy warning message.

    Redirects

    Add redirect mapping.

    Scopes

    Add boosting rules. SXA lets you use search scopes to limit search results based on conditions. Within a scope, you can boost certain results by defining boosting rules.

    Shared Site Settings

    View delegated areas. Do not edit this section manually.

    Site Grouping

    Children of this folder provide a Sitecore Site definition. These are equivalent to Sitecore <site> nodes that you would define within your config file if you were building the site without SXA. You can also manage these items using the SXA Site Manager.

    Add custom providers here. SXA lets you select different link providers for different sites. This can be useful when you have multiple sites that all have different link requirements.

    You can also assign a custom login page.

    Social Media Groups

    Define how you want to share your pages on social media. You can specify the social sharing button snippets.

    Twitter Apps

    Enter your Twitter app credentials. Accessing the Twitter APIs requires a set of credentials that you must pass with each request.

    If you have existing Twitter apps, you can view and edit your apps via the Twitter app dashboard, if you are logged in to your Twitter account on developer.twitter.com.

The custom items

When extending SXA, you must think about where to store your custom items. SXA overwrites the standard SXA sections during SXA updates. Therefore, placing custom items in tree branches controlled by SXA can result in your instance being broken after an upgrade.

SXA follows the Sitecore Helix principles that contain development process recommendations for building, testing, extending, and maintaining Sitecore implementations. The template folders following Helix layers are defined as:

  • Feature - contains concrete features of the solution as understood by the business owners and editors of the solution.

  • Foundation - contains base logic shared by multiple feature modules.

  • Project - provides the context of the solution. Whenever you create a new tenant it will automatically generate a Project structure similar to the following example:

The templates that SXA generates in the Project folder depend on the modules you choose in the Tenant creation wizard.

Do you have some feedback for us?

If you have suggestions for improving this article,