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Site Hierarchies

Sites can be organized hierarchically, similar to organizations, with child sites. This hierarchical structure simplifies sharing content between sites. Unlike organizations which only group users, sites organize pages, content, application data, and users through site memberships.

Content sharing is available for sites within the same hierarchy. For instance, if a parent site has a document type called Devcon Presentation and all its child sites should have a copy, the parent site’s administrator can enable content sharing to share the document type automatically with its child sites. Also, content sharing privileges can be set to let every site administrator share content across sites they manage. You can share these content types across sites:

Web Content Structures
Web Content Templates
Document Types
Vocabularies and Categories
Widget Templates
Data Definitions (Dynamic Data Lists)

See the Sites Admin Portlet section of Liferay’s portal.properties file for a list of relevant configurable properties. For example, the Sites.content.sharing.with.children.enabled property can disable/enable content sharing between sites and child sites, while letting site administrators configure it per site.

Site Hierarchy Roles and Permissions

These rules apply to site hierarchy:

Each child site in the hierarchy has its own administrator
The site administrator role permissions don’t flow down to child sites in the hierarchy
If a site administrator creates a child site, he or she has the same permissions in that child site. This is because creating a site makes you the owner of that site (not inheritance).
A site administrator has no default role in any child sites created by other site administrators.

Note

If you want a user to have administrative access to all sites in a site/child site hierarchy, you must create a role based on the site administrator role that has the Manage Subsites permission.

Navigating Site Hierarchy with the Sites Directory Application

The sites directory application is a configurable app that shows a hierarchy of sites and child sites. It enables users to navigate to any of the displayed sites. To use this app to display site hierarchies, follow these steps: