Table of Contents

Websites

Create and manage multiple websites or language layers

A website is a default building block in DynamicWeb 10 CMS under which pages are placed. All solutions are born with a default website called Standard, although some (like those based on DynamicWeb Swift), can feature others out of the box. To access the websites list, open the context menu for the content area tree and click Websites: WebsiteList From the websites list you can:

  • Create websites
  • Create new language layers
  • Open and edit an existing website or language layer using the list item context menu

Depending on your permission level, it is also possible to deactivate or delete a websites.

Creating a website

To create a new website:

  1. Click + New website
  2. Provide a name and select a regional setting
  3. Set the default page template in the layout tab
  4. Review and configure the website settings
  5. Save

Creating a language layer

Language layers are a special type of website which functions as a structural copy of another website, so that all pages and paragraphs created on the master website are also created on each language layer. Language layers are typically used when you want to create identical but translated versions of e.g. a branding site.

To create a language layer:

  1. Click + New website Language
  2. Select a website to copy from
  3. Provide a name and select a regional setting
  4. If relevant, check copy permissions
  5. Create

You can tweak language layer behaviour using the language management settings.

Website Settings

Websites are rich objects with lots of settings for tweaking or configuring behaviour. Settings are organized into tabs of broadly related settings, read more about each tab below.

General

The General-tab is either very important or not at all important, depending on the website design. If the design does not use items to extend website settings, the only settings on the General-tab will be Name, Regional settings, and a checkbox to control whether the website is published or not: WebsiteSettingsGeneral On the other hand, if the design does use an item type to extend page settings (via the Advanced tab), this tab will also contain all the fields from this item type. This is extensively used in DynamicWeb Swift, as illustrated below. WebsiteSettingsGeneral

Domain and URL

The Domain and URL-tab contains settings for controlling website domains and 404-handling practices. WebsitesDomainTab Using the Details-section you can:

  • In Domain you can add a list of all domains that this website should receive
  • In Primary domain you can select one of the added domains to force a 301 redirect from all other domains to this domain
  • If you check lock pages to domain you will not be able to access pages on other websites on this solution from the domains added to this website
  • You can select a 404-page to redirect users to, if an URL cannot resolve. This is only active for the domains added above.

Using the URL-section you can:

  • View the current URL slug for the website
  • Set an Use in URL value - this value overwrites any auto-generated value from the Customized URLs tool
  • Check Do not include URL in subpage URLs if relevant
  • Check Redirect first page to ‘/’ to prevent search engines from indexing your first page as duplicate content. This setting is only relevant if you use Location and page name as the URL type in the Customized URLs tool. It also has no effect if:
    • No domains have been added to the details settings
    • No primary domain has been selected in the details settings
    • The page has parameters in the URL

Layout

The Layout-tab allows you to specify which types of pages should use which page templates: WebsitesLayoutTab You can:

  • Set a default template for standard pages on this website
  • Set a default template for each item page type
  • Set a default template for each item paragraph type

Please note, that in most cases nothing is selected explicitly here, since templates are auto-matched to page item types if they are named correctly.

Advanced

The Advanced-tab contains various, well, advanced settings. WebsitesAdvancedTab

  • The item type settings allow you to select item types to extend the standard website and page properties with
  • Use the Workflow setting to select a workflow for the website
  • Using the Security settings you can setup HTTPS on the website:
    • Default allows visitors to use both HTTP & HTTPS
    • Force SSL forces a 301 redirect to HTTPS
    • Un-force SSL forces a 301 redirect to HTTP
  • You can also select a login template. If so, the whole website will be behind login

Finally, the Robots.txt settings provide you with a degree of control over how crawlers index the website - you can:

  • Allow or disallow crawlers access to the Google Sitemap for your website
  • Include all products in the sitemap.xml (this requires a primary group on all products)
  • Enter the content for the robots.txt file for the website

The contents of the Robots.txt file specified here should be considered virtual, e.g. an actual file will not exist on the disk. Instead it will be served by the 404 handler in DynamicWeb (Admin/public/404.aspx) which has to be set up in the IIS settings in order to work. If an actual robots.txt file exists on the disk, the virtual content specified in the field will not be used.

By default Disallow: /?cartcmd= is added to Robots.txt to avoid bots from indexing carts (the command is not visible from the Robots.txt input field).

The settings will not work on websites located on a *.dynamicweb.dk domain, as these domains are excluded from search engine indexing.

Ecommerce

Finally, the Ecommerce-tab contains settings for specifying the default Ecommerce context values for the website. These settings are super important - even if there is only one channel, currency or language on the solution - as a large number of features rely on a default shop ID or language ID being set. EcommerceTab You can:

  • Set a default channel - typically a Shop on the website
  • Set a default language
  • Set a default currency
  • Set a default country
  • Set a default stock location
  • Set a Prices with VAT configuration, controlling whether prices should be displayed with VAT by default:
    • Nothing selected means the setting is not set (no state selected) - in practice, this is equivalent to selecting Yes explicitly.
    • No means that VAT is not displayed in frontend (e.g. for B2B websites)
    • Yes means that VAT is displayed in frontend, based on the most specific VAT rate set for the product
  • Activate Reverse charge for VAT for this website - see this guide for more information on how to set that up

Websites recycle bin

If a website is deleted, it is moved to the website recycle bin. This ensures that if a website is accidentally deleted, it can be restored from this recycle bin. To restore a website, right-click the context menu for the website and select 'Restore'.

EcommerceTab

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