Site types are a way to differentiate sites based on criteria such as their function or the type of data they include. For example, you might have one site type for commerce sites, and another for managing financial services.

You can reference sites based on a specific site type. A site can have a single site type or multiple site types. The site types are stored in the siteTypes property of the Site Repository’s touchpoint item descriptor.

Site types can be used for filtering, to ensure that only the desired types of sites are displayed. If a site’s siteTypes property contains no value, the site is considered by SiteManager to be a universal site. If the property does contain a value, applications that require specific site types will verify if the property contains their required site type. If it does, the application will make the site available. If the siteTypes property does not contain the required site type, the site is filtered out.

The elements of the siteTypes property are enumerated string values that are limited to the site type values defined in the SiteManager. Valid enumerated string values can be added to the siteTypes collection by the installed modules.

For additional information on SiteManager, refer to the Platform Programming Guide.

Note: Be careful not to confuse site types with site configuration types. Site configuration types are repository item types in the Site Repository that enable you to create different site-like entities to support different commerce channels. For example, you might want to create a site configuration type that represents physical (“brick and mortar”) stores. See Appendix A: Extending Multisite Support for more information about site configuration types.