In the age of increasingly important digital marketing and brand building, many companies or individuals often need to manage multiple websites, whether it is different brands, product lines, or multilingual, regional sites.Faced with the need for multi-site content management, AnQiCMS (AnQiCMS) provides a graceful and efficient solution that helps us easily achieve unified display and management of content.

The core concept of multi-site management in Anqi CMS

The design philosophy of AnQi CMS is one of 'a system to manage all'.This means you do not need to install a separate CMS for each site, but can create and manage multiple independent sites in a single secure CMS instance.This model brings significant efficiency improvement: You can manage the publishing content, user permissions, template settings, and even SEO strategies of all sites under a unified backend interface.This not only greatly reduces repetitive work and operating costs, but also facilitates cross-site data sharing and resource integration, ensuring consistency in brand image and content publishing.

Build a multi-site environment: from zero to one practice

To implement multi-site management in Anqi CMS, you first need to set up the environment and create sites. This process is simpler than you imagine.

  1. PreparationFirst, make sure that all your domain names are correctly resolved to your server IP address.Whether it is the main site domain or the sub-domain to be added in the future, DNS configuration needs to be done in advance.

  2. Create a new siteLog in to your main AnQi CMS backend. Find and click the "Multi-site Management" feature in the left navigation menu.Here, you will see a button to add a new site.Click it, the system will guide you to fill in the basic information of the new site:

    • Site nameThis is the name of the site you identify in the background, you can name it according to the actual business scenario.
    • Site root directoryThis is a very critical step. Anqi CMS will create an independent directory for each site to store cache and other data. If you are using Docker deployment, it usually starts with/app/For example,/app/dev_anqicms_comMake sure this directory name is unique.
    • website address: Enter the complete URL of the new site, for examplehttp://dev.anqicms.com.
    • Administrator account password: Set up independent backend administration account and password for new site.
    • Database nameEach site will use an independent database to store its content data. Enter a database name that is not already in use, for exampledev_anqicms_com.
    • Duplicate database informationIf you are installing AnQi CMS in a Docker environment and want to reuse the database connection information of the main site, you can usually choose to 'reuse the default database account information' to avoid the trouble of repeated filling in.
    • Select the template to use: You can select a set of templates uploaded to the system for your new site, and you can also change them later.

  3. Configure reverse proxyAfter creating the new site, you still need to configure it on the server side, directing different domains to your Anqin CMS service.This is usually implemented through the reverse proxy function of web servers such as Nginx, Apache, etc.The core idea is that regardless of how many site domain names you have, they will all be routed through a reverse proxy to the same port that the AnQi CMS service is listening on (for example, the default port 8001). When accessingdev.anqicms.comAt that time, the reverse proxy will forward the request to the Anqi CMS port 8001, and according to the domain name of the request, the Anqi CMS internally identifies that this isdev.anqicms.comSite, thus displaying its corresponding content. If you use Baota panel or 1Panel and other management tools, configuring reverse proxy will be very intuitive, just specify the domain and the listening address of AnQi CMS (for examplehttp://127.0.0.1:8001）to do so.

Implement unified content display: cross-site call intelligence

After setting up a multi-site environment, how can you display content flexibly between different sites to achieve 'unified display'? This is exactly where AnQi CMS is powerful.

  1. Content Model: The foundation of unified content structureAnQi CMS provides flexible content model functionality. You can also define the same or similar content models for different sites (such as article models, product models).This uniformity in structure is the foundation for cross-site content display.When all the content of the sites follows a similar structure, the unified display and data call will become easier in the future.

  2. siteIdThe magic of parametersThe template tags of AnQi CMS are the core of unified content display. In almost all content call tags (such asarchiveListDocument list,categoryListCategory list,navListIn the navigation list, etc., it provides a name calledsiteIdThe parameter. This means that if you want to display the content of site B on site A, you simply need to use the corresponding tag in the template code of site A, and passsiteIdSpecify the ID of the B site. For example, if you want to display the latest product list of a child site on the homepage of the main site, you can use similar code in the main site template:{% archiveList products with moduleId="2" siteId="子站ID" limit="5" %}In this way, you can easily display the content of any site managed under any safe CMS instance on other sites, achieving the true unified display of content.

  3. Multilingual support and template reuseIf your multilingual site requirements involve multiple languages, the multilingual support feature of AnQi CMS will be very useful. You can configure independent language packages for different language sites and utilizesiteIdParameters load the corresponding language content in the template. At the same time, as different sites can share templates or make fine adjustments based on the same set of templates, it can greatly enhance the efficiency of template development and maintenance.

  4. Unified navigation and system settingsIn addition to content, you can also flexibly control navigation and other system settings. Each site has independent navigation management, but if you want to unify some navigation, you can also specify it in the template.siteIdCall navigation data for a specific site. Similarly, contact information, TDK, and other system-level settings can also be managed uniformly or differently according to the site ID.

The advantages and efficiency of managing multiple sites

Adopting the multi-site content display and management solution of Anqi CMS, you will experience unprecedented operational efficiency. It not only simplifies the cumbersome deployment and maintenance work, but also throughsiteIdParameters, have given the content a high degree of flexibility. This makes it possible to build complex cross-site content ecosystems, whether it is in SEO optimization, brand collaboration promotion, or the consistency of user experience, can achieve significant improvement.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

  1. Ask: Can I use different templates for different sites in a safe CMS? Answer:Of course you can. When creating a new site, you can choose a specific set of templates.Even after that, you can independently replace and configure different templates in the background of each site to achieve differentiated appearance and layout.

  2. Ask: Can I directly 'copy' the content I posted on one site to another?**Ans