The talk at the Neos Conference 2018 discusses the advantages of setting up multiple websites using the Neos CMS, emphasizing benefits such as streamlined development, enhanced editorial processes, and cost efficiency. It covers how to create and manage multisite setups, including content reuse and customization, while also addressing performance considerations and potential future developments for scalability. Attendees are encouraged to leverage existing features and contribute experiences to enhance the Neos ecosystem.

1. One Neos - Many Websites
Sebastian Helzle
Neos Conference 2018

2. Sebastian Helzle
• Product Owner
@ punkt.de / Karlsruhe
• Neos CMS Core Team Member
• @sebobo

3. What will be discussed in this talk
• Why do we want to have many sites in one Neos
• What does Neos offer to make multisite setups easy
• How to create a multisite
• Summary
• Time for questions

4. Why do I talk about this topic?

5. Motivation for having multi site setups

6. The main benefits
• Benefits for development & maintenance
• Optimized editor processes
• Launch new sites and microsites with ease
• Business (money) advantages

7. Benefits for development & maintenance
• Only one codebase to be taken care of
• Increased security
• One server setup
• One integration pipeline
• Features roll out to all sites at the same time
• And can be limited with feature flags
• Optimize one site and get a benefits in all of them

8. Optimize editorial process
• Have reusable content between sites
• Have same usability and processes on all sites
• Only one login is needed
• Cross site navigation menus possible
• Reuse assets like images, documents and others

9. Launch new sites and microsites with ease
• Work on them in parallel to existing pages
• Manage sites and domains in the backend
• Secure the domains until Go-Live with an authentication
• Then:
• Turn of authentication and go live
• If necessary map live domain to server and then go live

10. Business benefits
• Reduced longterm cost through lower development & maintenance efforts
• But slightly increased initial cost for the first two sites
• More up-to-date content with improved editorial process
• Reduced time to market with new sites
• Consistent corporate identity

11. Neos offers many advantages in multi site setups

12. Reuse content from other sites
• Examples:
• Content for privacy, license or legal texts
• Banners & advertisements
• Records of employees & authors
• Categories & tags
• Works with any reference property
• Neos will show the source by the domain

13. Change the starting point & reference any page
myPageReference:
type: reference
ui:
label: i18n
inspector:
editorOptions:
placeholder: i18n
startingPoint: '/'
nodeTypes:
- ‚Neos.Neos:Document'

14. Or use one site as global content hub
myContentReferences:
type: references
ui:
label: i18n
inspector:
editorOptions:
placeholder: i18n
startingPoint: ‚/sites/contenthub‘
nodeTypes:
- ‚Neos.Neos:Content‘

15. Sitegeist.Taxonomy
• Cross-site categorization & related
content system
• Lives inside it’s own content tree
• Still experimental!
• https://github.com/sitegeist/
Sitegeist.Taxonomy

16. Hint:
Give every element a fitting title.
You will find it much faster!

17. Using content dimensions for multisites
• Have a master site
• Use dimensions to customize content on children sites
• Needs mapping of domains to dimensions
• Could get more complex with multiple languages at the same time
• See case study by CORE4 (and ask Bernhard Schmitt @nezaniel)

18. Handling site specific configurations
• Multiple Settings files in site packages will override each other
• Could be solved with separate Context per site but has drawbacks
• Core caching is not shared
• Needs more configuration on the webserver
• Context must be set correctly for console commands
• Put global configuration into one Settings.yaml
• Have site specific configuration in the site node
• Use a custom nodetype for the homepages

19. Some examples
• Social media links
• Parameters for webservices
• Site specific footer links
• Config for frontend plugins

20. Example: Rootpage nodetype
'My.Vendor:RootPage':
superTypes:
'Neos.Neos:Document': true
ui:
label: i18n
icon: ‚icon-home'
properties:
twitterUrl: ...
companyName: ...
contactFormRecipient: ...
theme: ...
apiToken: ...
trackingId: ...

21. Theming and customizations
• Use homepage nodes to set themes & customize
• Change logo
• Change typography, colors, iconset, …
• Use 3rd party packages to extend Neos multisite
capabilities

22. CM.Neos.ThemeModule
• Customize colors & typography
• Supports multisites
• Add custom SCSS
• Add additional custom settings
• https://github.com/coders-market/
CM.Neos.ThemeModule

23. Separate site handling if necessary
• Use roles which are locked into one site
• Use dynamic policies which match users to sites
• Match asset collections with sites to keep assets
separated

24. Some notes on performance
• Many small sites behave similar to one bigger site
• Neos can handle a lot of content, no matter where and scales nicely
• Real project with 8 sites containing ~50.000 nodes is no problem
• 100.000s of nodes should work too
• Future Neos developments will make this even more scalable
• Site selection in backend might be harder to use with > 30 sites
• Could be optimized easily in the future

25. Let’s create a multisite

26. Start by creating a new site in the Sites Management module

27. Create a blank site in your existing site package

28. The new site will need a bit of configuration

29. Configure your site and add a new domain

30. Set the domain you want to use

31. Map the domain in the web server onto your Neos installation

32. Test your new site 🎉

33. Other ways to create a new site
• Use the site management module to create a site package with a new site

34. Use the kickstart command from cli „flow site:create“

35. Notes about creating sites
• Creating a site package is easier with the package „neos/site-
kickstarter“
• You can also build a site package manually if you know what you do
• You will miss out a useful boilerplate
• If you create a new site package you have to import the new site manually
• Don’t forget that additional site packages should depend on the main one
• Don’t forget that Settings.yaml files have one hierarchy

36. Summary
• Neos is already well prepared to handle many sites
• Many use cases are already solvable
• Some use cases need small adjustments
• Performance will continuously get better with future Neos versions
• Start using the feature and forward use cases and experiences to the core team
• Contribute or sponsor changes that could benefit all projects

37. Questions?
@sebobo
helzle@punkt.de

38. Sources
• https://github.com/coders-market/CM.Neos.ThemeModule
• https://github.com/sitegeist/Sitegeist.Taxonomy