Sites & Channels Configuration

Only those mounts that point to an hst:configuration that contain an hst:channel  node will be shown in the Experience manager overview. The channel nodes are configured directly below the hst:configuration node or below the hst:workspace in the hst:configuration node.  If the hst:channel is configured below the hst:workspace, the channel settings will be editable in the Experience manager, otherwise, read-only. Thus for example in case the project is called example, the configuration below results in read-only channel settings

/hst:hst:
  /hst:configurations:
    /example:
      /hst:channel:
        /hst:channelinfo:

and below in editable channel settings:

/hst:hst:
  /hst:configurations:
    /example:
      /hst:workspace:
        /hst:channel:
          /hst:channelinfo:

Below /hst:hst/hst:sites the hst:site nodes are configured. An hst:site glues together:

1. An absolute content location for the mount through property hst:content
2. The hst:configuration for the mount (a sitemap and optionally the HMVC configuration for the mount)

On the  hosts configuration page you can read that a mount refers through an  hst:mountpoint property to an  hst:site. The hst:site refers to an absolute content location through the property hst:content. It also refers to a sitemap and HMVC configuration below /hst:hst/hst:configuration either by an explicit property hst:configurationpath or by naming convention (preferred!): in that case the node name of the hst:site node is used to lookup the node with the same name below /hst:hst/hst:configuration. Putting it all together for a single channel in a setup having local development environment and production environment combined, the configuration looks for example as follows:

/hst:hst:
  /hst:configurations:
    /example:
      /...:
      /hst:workspace:
        /...:
        /hst:channel:
  /hst:hosts:
    /dev-env:
      /localhost:
        /hst:root:
          hst:mountpoint: /hst:hst/hst:sites/example
    /prod-env:
      /com:
        /example:
          /www:
            /hst:root:
              hst:mountpoint: /hst:hst/hst:sites/example
  /hst:sites:
     /example:
       hst:content: /content/documents/example
/content:
  /documents:
    /example:
      /common:
      /news:
      /...:

From the configuration above, we can see that the both http://localhost and http://www.example.com resolve to the mount / ( hst:root) and that that mount points to /hst:hst/hst:sites/example. The site node in turn indicates that the content for http://localhost and http://www.example.com will be found below /content/documents/example. Since the hst:site node does not have an explicit property hst:configurationpath, it will get its sitemap configuration and HMVC configuration name convention based, i.e. from /hst:hst/hst:configurations/example.