If you are using the Oracle ATG Web Commerce multisite feature, you can associate a site with a particular content set within a search project, using one of the strategies outlined in this section:
Single project, single content set—Use this strategy if you do not need to target searches for different sites.
Note: If you have data for multiple sites grouped into a single content set, you can still target searches to a particular site’s data by using a constraint on the query request (see the ATG Search Query Guide for information). Keep in mind that this can only be used to narrow searching within a content set, not to combine data from separate content sets.
Single project, multiple content sets—Each content set can contain content for one or more sites.
This approach is useful if you want to allow users to choose a site to search, or if you need to display both site-specific content and content that has been combined from multiple sites in your search results. You may want to separate your content into contents sets to segregate data that is always searched together from other site data.
Separate project per site—Use this approach only if you want to keep content for each site entirely separate. This may result in faster searches, since no constraints need to be applied to the searches, but keep in mind that search results from different projects cannot be combined.
The diagrams that follow show each of these configuration possibilities. For information on search projects, linked projects, etc., see the Managing Search Projects chapter.
Note that multisite considerations are not the only factor in determining how your projects and content are arranged. For example, you may want to separate out data that you expect to be indexed or searched frequently from data that is updated or searched less often. Hardware considerations may also be a factor.
The simplest multisite arrangement is to have all content in a single content set and a single project, which is searched the same way by all sites. This works best if you have a small amount of content.
Multisite with One Content Set
A more complicated arrangement separates out your content into content sets, which can be individually searched and updated.
Multisite with Segregated Content
Finally, you can completely wall off content for separate sites in separate projects.
You configure certain Oracle ATG Web Commerce Search multisite settings in Site Administration, but the majority of your search project work is done in Search Administration.
Important: When you are creating sites in Site Administration, in order to link those sites to search content, you must first create projects and content sets in Search Administration. See the Associating Content with Sites in Site Administration section in this guide for further information.
