Global multisite management made easy

If you want to further restrict access also in the master site, so that specific languages can be accessed by specific roles, we have developed this incubator module to help with that.

There's no question that most industries are shifting towards a more global marketplace. For many businesses, therefore, publishing global content is crucial to reaching an international audience. What this looks like for many companies is multiple websites with internationalized and localized content, or content specialized to specific products and market segments. Without the proper tooling in place, however, it becomes complicated to manage content across multiple sites without duplicating efforts.

Let’s look at what multisite is, the challenges companies face when managing multiple sites, and the CMS features necessary to make multisite more straightforward for digital marketing teams.

A multisite approach means managing many websites within a single CMS and sharing content between them. Businesses require multiple websites for many reasons, from localizing content to specific countries or regions, to creating specialized sites for unique brands or product lines. Many companies have a multitude of audiences they cater to, and multiple websites gives them the opportunity to provide customer-oriented information for each specific market segment.

The approach also lets businesses enter new markets and better differentiate their brands from the competition. Optimizing the content that your audiences see by creating various websites is crucial for providing better digital experiences. Localized content, therefore, makes your brand more personal, and has a greater chance of engaging worldwide audiences.

While multiple sites may be necessary for most multinational companies, there are many reasons why it's difficult for marketing teams to manage. Without the right tooling, multisite management becomes inefficient and expensive. Here are some of the common challenges companies face when delivering content to multiple websites:

For companies that choose to use a multisite approach, it's challenging to ensure unified messaging across separate websites. If there's a change to any similar content, it has to be replicated on each site or you could be left with inaccurate or inconsistent information. Poor messaging can negatively impact the digital experience, and in turn, a brand’s reputation. Many CMSs, however, lack the capability to keep content in sync automatically in a multisite environment. Multiple sites without syncing content is a surefire way to end up with inconsistencies and disjointed branding.

Just because a company has separate websites for different geographical regions, doesn't mean every piece of content will be unique to each site. Some content won't be relevant to specific regions, or it's already been localized and publishing again will result in redundant information. In other cases, the same content can be used in multiple regions like the U.S., U.K. and Australia without any modifications. It can be challenging and time-consuming to manage which content should - and should not - be published across various websites.

With the pace of digital innovation, companies need to remain agile. This means entering new markets and releasing new product lines quickly. When companies do this, they often want to build a specialized website for this new market, product, or service that’s highly tailored to specific audiences. Without tools to make reusing content easy, and launching new websites fast, many companies face challenges in creating a new website that's consistent with its overall corporate branding.

With Magnolia's Live Copy feature, you can reuse content across multiple websites easily. For complicated multisite setups, you can create sites that reference a master website and have the same structure. You only have to manage the master site, and all reference sites will update automatically - reducing the effort required for keeping content for multiple websites in sync.

Have a look at this 3-minute video walktrough to get a quick overview of our Live Copy feature:

These are some of the key capabilities of the Live Copy feature:

Magnolia makes it straightforward to launch new sites from a master copy. With the click of a button, you can create a live copy that will automatically sync with the main website whenever changes are made. This lets companies remain agile and quickly respond to an evolving marketplace. Using the Live Copy feature, you’ll easily provide specialized content to new audiences by launching new websites fast and stay ahead of the competition.

Each piece of content has a reference link to the master copy, and even if you move content, the links remain intact. These links ensure that reference sites sync with the master site automatically. If there needs to be changes to the reference site, specific content can be unlinked and modified freely. The unlinked content will not be overridden by changes to the master site unless you decide to reattach it. This lets marketers localize content while retaining the structure of the main global website, which is especially useful when building multilingual sites.

Sometimes you don't want to completely detach content from the master copy, but only edit small sections of the content. In this case, you can override certain properties of the reference copy down to the granular level. The content will still automatically sync to the master copy, while the relevant sections that you override will remain protected. Overriding creates efficiency in managing partially localized content. This feature makes it easier to localize content for more similar regions that differ only by dialects - like modifying content produced in the U.S. for an Australian audience.

Efficiency through content reuse

Live Copy allows you to share your content across your multiple websites, and roll out your updates smoothly in one go, without duplicating efforts.

Governance

Live Copy allows your central editorial team to easily manage and protect your brand content or any core content that you want to be the same, regardless of where your visitors come from.

Flexibility

Live Copy also allows your local editorial teams to adapt the content that needs to be specific to their market needs.

Live Copy is a powerful feature, but without proper guidance, implementing it can get challenging. We generally recommend clients to use Live Copy when:

In a typical use case, you would have a main site (i.e. global site) and local websites (say 10 country sites, in 14 languages). Most of your content is the same across all these websites, but you would have some pages where some content needs to be specific for a certain country, or even specific for each country (eg. events teasers, product promotions, customer support information).

Live Copy is a great fit here, as it allows your central editorial team to automatically roll out to all your websites any changes they make to your core content which is common across all websites. At the same time, your local teams can flexibly overwrite that content that needs to have a local flavor.

In the end, many organizations need features to manage localized websites while maintaining a consistent global message. Magnolia's Live Copy feature is ideal for syncing content across separate websites while reducing the workload of marketing teams. This leads to an efficient and cost-effective global content strategy that offers greater digital experiences for international audiences and differentiation compared to competitors.

With the right tooling in place, companies can confidently tap into new market segments without the challenges facing most multisite environments. Now digital marketing teams are free from multisite content management to focus on producing more timely and personalized content for their global audiences.

Managing multiple sites easily is just one capability to look out for when choosing a CMS.