Site factory: definition and 5 steps to build one

A site factory answers a specific need: launching and running dozens of websites, sometimes hundreds, without starting from scratch each time. It concerns universities, multi-brand or multi-country groups, subsidiary and franchise networks and public bodies with regional sites.

What is a site factory? 

A site factory is a platform for creating and running a large number of websites from a shared foundation whose templates, components and contribution rules are easy to reuse when wanted. Every new site can inherit that foundation, so it is quick to launch and simple to maintain. Each entity keeps control of its own content, within the framework set by the central team.

This approach ensures consistent multisite governance and enables standard processes for building and scaling websites. This structure allows organizations to deliver cohesive and adaptable digital experiences efficiently across all their sites.

In practice, a site factory rests on four building blocks.

• a shared technical foundation of page templates, components and content models;
• a way to create a site from that foundation, with no new development;
• shared content and media, published once and reused across sites;
• roles and permissions defined site by site.

What is the difference between multisite and a site factory?

It is important to start by explaining the difference between a multisite structure and a site factory, two concepts that are often confused. We use the term 'multisite' when a multisite CMS is able to manage a multitude of heterogeneous sites. These sites can be intranets, institutional sites or even event sites that all require a specific architecture. On the other hand, a site factory allows you to create a multitude of sites based on the same structure.

We can therefore define a website factory as the set of technical processes and methodologies that allow teams to design, produce and publish websites based on a predefined set of features.

In short, a multisite setup runs different sites on one platform, while a site factory produces similar sites from one model.

Why create a site factory? The benefits

A site factory helps large corporations because it allows them to pool the development of the sites of their franchises or subsidiaries from the same infrastructure. The employees thus have access to a standardized base that allows them to deploy sites simply, quickly and at a lower cost according to their specific needs. This speed of deployment is due to the autonomy of users, who have the flexibility to establish their own content publishing strategies and the ability to deploy sites easily, without the help of technical teams. 

• faster time to market, since a new site starts from an existing foundation;
• lower cost per site, since development is pooled;
• one maintenance effort, since an update to the foundation benefits every site;
• central governance, with brand, editorial guidelines and permissions managed in one place;
• stronger security, since access rules and updates to the foundation are managed in one place for all sites;
• autonomy within a framework, where each entity publishes its own content under the agreed rules.

Site factory use cases

Site factories show up wherever an organization has to run many similar websites.

• an industrial group with one site per country and subsidiary, in each market's language and product range;
• a public body running a national site and regional sites from the same content;
• a university whose faculties, services and labs each publish within a shared framework;
• a franchise or branch network where each location has its own site and needs no technical skills to run it.

Two customer stories

• Unil, University of Lausanne. Higher education. A park of more than 300 websites at its peak, 80 central-services sites brought into 1, more than 600 contributors.
• France Travail. Public sector. 19 regional sites.

5 steps to implement a site factory 

Before you start developing your site factory, you need to know what type of structure your company needs. Each site factory has its own unique characteristics and architecture, define yours by working through these key considerations:  

1. Define specific user needs

The needs of the future users of your site factory depend on their technical skills and their content publishing frequency. For example, the marketing team of a large group will want a flexible structure, able to give them freedom and autonomy in the creation and layout of content, while the manager of a franchise will prefer a simple structure with predefined configurations that do not require high page structuring skills. Depending on these parameters, your teams of developers will then be able to build the technical base of your site factory according to the profile of future contributors.

2. Establish a contribution strategy

Based on how your business teams use the platform, you will be able to define contribution roles and manage editing rights for your site factory. For occasional contributions with little page creation, limited access to the platform's editing capabilities will not be disruptive and will ensure the security of your digital environment. But for a marketing team that frequently adds new content to its site, it will be necessary to define a contribution role adapted to the modification and publication of pages with more free editing rights.

3. Develop content presentation materials

Once your contribution roles are defined, your technical team will be able to set up ready-to-use presentation templates modeled on the structure of your main site. They can then be edited by your contributors according to their needs. On the question of editing rights, a marketing team needs a lot more templates and configuration possibilities than a franchise manager. A marketer will want to be able to change the location of modules, add modules and save the new page configuration they have created, while the franchise manager will prefer a template that is framed and simple to edit.

4. Content management 

To fill your page templates, you need content. Some of your sites will probably contain the same content. But instead of recreating it locally, it would be simpler to have a central repository that stores all of the group's content in one place for unlimited reuse.

 

These features could then be useful:

• Centralized multimedia sharing (use a source image on different pages/sites)
• Content blocks shared across all sites, to modify content globally
• Reuse of a module developed and deployed locally by everyone.  

Interface to activate a module on different sites

5. Train your teams on your digital solution

It is important that your contributors stay engaged with your publishing tool and know how to create content easily. Providing documentation and tutorials based on your teams' roles is important. If this is not done, they will turn to other tools due to lack of skills, which will take you away from your content centralization strategy and the very principle of creating your site factory. 

How to choose the technology for a site factory

The choice of technology for a site factory rests on the following criteria:

• native multisite management, to create a site from a model without new development;
• shared templates and components that can be locked or opened site by site;
• roles and permissions per site, per language and per content type;
• sharing and reuse of content and media across sites;
• multilingual support, as soon as a site is rolled out by country;
• the delivery model (traditional, headless or hybrid);
• hosting (cloud or on-premise) and the maintenance that comes with it.

In-house development or digital agency?

The choice depends largely on the resources you have. Building an enterprise web project in-house takes a strong technical team. A site factory needs one even more, as it calls for careful thinking about which templates and content models are shared or specific. A digital agency gives you all these skills at once, an outside perspective and often a shorter development phase. Browse our network of partner agencies.

The cloud option for your site factory

Whether it's to improve the security of your network of websites, or to relieve the IT department of time-consuming site factory management, the cloud is becoming an increasingly popular option for organizations.

In practice, cloud hosting management (as with Jahia Cloud) simplifies site factory management, whether at the launch of each new site or during their operation (maintenance, monitoring, upgrades...). It takes the IT department just a few clicks to bring a new website online, whether in production or in an iso development environment.

What's more, many monitoring, surveillance and security tasks are either automated or managed by Jahia Cloud teams, as an integral part of the service provided. In Jahia Cloud, all data from all sites is tracked in a single cloud management console, within the Datadog tool.

Jahia Solutions 

When each new site repeats install, configuration and integration while every update has to be deployed site by site, a site factory loses its point. Jahia makes site creation repeatable.

A new site starts from a template set, from a pre-packaged site that gives a complete starting point with standard content, from the import of an existing site or from presets that apply templates, permissions and settings from the start.

Control stays shared. Predefined roles (editor, editorial manager, administrator) or custom ones plus a local admin per site let each team run its own space within the framework set by the group. Permissions are set by site, section, page or content type.

Images and documents come from a shared asset library, so every site stays on the latest versions. Modules can be turned on or off per site, from the interface or via API. For country sites, translation can be automated through built-in connections to specialized tools while local teams control sensitive content.

Jahia can be implemented headless or in a traditional way, in the cloud or on-premise, with or without a digital agency. The multisite features page gives the detail. If you want to learn more about this topic, request a demo today.