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:
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.
To create a new website:
Click + New website
Provide a name and select a regional setting
Set the default page template in the layout tab
Review and configure the website settings
Save
To create a language layer:
Click + New website Language
Select a website to copy from
Provide a name and select a regional setting
Create
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.
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:
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.
The Domain and URL-tab contains settings for controlling website domains and 404-handling practices.
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
The Layout-tab allows you to specify which types of pages should use which page templates:
You can:
Set a default template for standard pages on this website
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.
The Advanced-tab contains various, well, advanced settings.
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 Sitemap for your website
Include all products in the sitemap.xml (this requires a URL provider to be specified on a page)
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.
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.
You can:
Set a default channel - typically a Shop on the website
From the websites list you can:
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.
Using the Details-section you can:
You can:
You can: