Subsites are smaller additional sites within the website and CMS product with their own theme, content, and URL. The subsite must be purchased before you can create one; you can purchase the site by submitting a support ticket.
After you purchase it, our team will create the subsite for you. This article will detail what's happening behind the scenes as we do so. You can access these settings from Site Management.
When you are ready to launch your subsite, your site manager must submit a ticket three weeks before the launch date so we can arrange changes to the bindings and DNS if it is independent of your main site's domain name. Ensure you're ready to launch by consulting our go-live checklist.
Site Configuration Settings
This is what the Site Configuration settings fields refer to:
- Site name: The name of the site as referenced in admin areas, such as the Site Management settings. There is no character limit for this setting, and it can be changed at any time.
- Site alias: The name of the site as referenced in admin areas, such as the site picker drop-down and as part of the URL. The Site alias has a maximum of 12 characters, and cannot be changed once created.
- Description: An overview of the site, for internal purposes only.
- Default content entry language: The default language for your site. This cannot be changed once chosen.
- Requires login: Use the drop-down menu to indicate if this site requires a login to access it when it goes live.
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Main address: The main URL of the site, including the Scheme, Domain, and Folder.
- Scheme: This field is automatically set to HTTPS and cannot be changed.
- Domain: The domain for your new site. When first creating the site, use the domain for the public site so admin users can preview content. You can change this to an independent domain when you're ready to go live.
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Folder: If your new site is filed under a folder within the larger domain, enter that name here. For example, the URL for one of our demo sites is: https://pointrussell.opencities.com/Leisure/Home.
In this example, the Domain is "pointrussell.opencities.com," while the Folder is "Leisure."
- HTTP handling: Indicate what to do when someone attempts to access the site using "http" instead of "https"
- More addresses: Enter any additional URLs people can use to access the site. When entered into a browser, these extra URLs will redirect the user to the Main address.
- Hide from Search engines: Check this box to hide your entire site from external search engines. This prevents your site from being indexed and searchable before you go live. Once you uncheck this box, your site will be available to index. Do not uncheck this box until you are ready to go live.
- Sitemap: Select Create to create a sitemap, which you can then submit to search engines.
Once we've created the site, you can adjust some settings in the Overview, Settings, Shortcuts, and Themes tabs. Please note that the settings enabled in the Overview tab are necessary for your functioning site. Changing most of these settings will cause the site to go down.
Overview Tab
Once we have created the site, the Site Configuration settings will become the Overview tab. However, the Default content entry language field will disappear, and the Site alias field will be greyed out, as you cannot edit these fields.
The option to Create and submit a sitemap to search engines will appear. This will allow you to submit your sitemap to search engines so they can index the structure of your site, but you should not do this until your site is live.
If you make any changes in this tab, remember to Save.
Settings Tab
The Settings tab allows you to see and edit the settings for various aspects of your site. You can edit the settings for:
- Site Settings
- Content Standards
- Metadata
- Language
- Location
- Asset Files
- The Site Footer
- Embed Codes
- Featured Sections
- Shared pages
- Social media feeds
- The Utility Bar
- Individual module settings
If you make any changes in this tab, remember to Save.
Shortcuts Tab
The Shortcuts tab lets you create Dashboard shortcuts for this site. These shortcuts help your content authors quickly create pages of different content types. You can create a shortcut for each content type available for this subsite and set a parent page for all new pages created through the shortcut.
- From the Site Management settings for your site, go to the Shortcuts tab.
- Under the New Shortcut menu, use the Content type drop-down menu to select the content type you're creating a shortcut for.
- In the Name field, enter the name for your shortcut. This works best if you just name it for the content type – "Event" for the OC Event content type, for example.
- Use the Parent location field to enter a parent page for all new pages created through the shortcut. This is a predictive text field, so just start typing in the Page name of the parent page and select it from the list.
- When you're ready, select Add and then Save.
Themes Tab
This tab is only available for users with the OC Site Designer role.
The Themes tab displays a list of published themes for you to apply the styling and layout for your subsite. You can create and manage themes in the Theme Management area, accessed by More > Themes Management.
As Themes Management is universal across all sites, you will see the full list of themes including those from other subsites and your main site. This tab will also show you which theme is currently applied to this site and is an easy way to figure out which theme you're working with.
To apply a theme from the list, hover over the theme and select Apply to implement it or Preview to see it. Save when you're finished.