Multi-Channel Setup
Introduction
Out of the box, Bloomreach Experience Manager's delivery framework (HST) provides support for a multi-language, multi-channel, multi-domain, and multi-webapp setup. Everything is supported through HST configuration. Things like cross-domain, cross-channel, cross-language and cross-site linking are also supported out-of-the-box. Links between documents belonging to different sites or languages are resolved automatically and can even be links to a different domain!
HST scales easily to many sites, channels and translations: some Bloomreach Experience Manager implementation projects run as many as 500 channels (including translations), and local tests go up to 1500 channels without performance degradation.
Experience Manager
The Experience manager can be used to create new channels from within the CMS. A 'channel' in the Experience manager can be a subsite, a translated site, a mobile site and more. Behind the scenes, the Channel Manager creates and modifies HST configuration.
The various child pages describe how to manually achieve what the Channel Manager does automatically. This information is relevant when developing a blueprint. A blueprint contains various HST configuration parts that are copied when a new channel is created. As a developer, you will most likely first create and test these configuration parts manually before making them part of a blueprint.
Terminology
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Multi-language: To have translated channels, each serving the same content in a different language.
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Multi-domain: To have multiple domains (different hosts) configured in the HST configuration.
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Multi-channel: To have multiple channels serving content from the same webapp.
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Multi-webapp: To have multiple site webapps.
Depending on the needs, a channel can require some custom HST configuration. For example, a French channel would have its own unique sitemap (French URLs) and site menu, but can share the configuration for components and templates with the English version.
Tutorials
The following tutorials explain how to add a new channel and how to add a translated channel. From HST's point of view, these things are all the same: HST channels.