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Considerations for Multi-Site Solution Architecture

  • Updated

When implementing a new multi-site client on PowerReviews, or adding a site to an existing client account, there are multiple ways to architect the structure. Consideration must be given to the client's wants and needs for interacting with the content in their accounts, as well as our ability to support them long-term. There are two basic ways to structure accounts within PowerReviews, and these involve Merchant Groups and Submerchants.

 

Merchant Groups

Merchant Groups are standalone sites (or sets of sites) that are effectively autonomous of one another. All settings and roles can be managed separately from other Merchant Groups, as well as reporting and moderation. For syndication, a Merchant Group generates one feed that contains all content that belongs to its Submerchants. All Merchant Groups contain at least 1 Submerchant.


Submerchants

Submerchants are additional sites that exist within the same Merchant Group. Sites that share the Merchant Group together will also share many of their configuration settings (such as reviews per page, SEO markup enablement, default sort order, etc.), as well as sharing reporting and moderation tools. If Submerchants share the same locale and Page IDs, content will automatically be shared between both sites. For Syndication, all Submerchants' content rolls up into a single feed that is created at the Merchant Group level. A Submerchant can only support a single locale.

 

Summary

In the majority of cases, it is recommended to implement multi-site clients using separate Merchant Groups. The only time PowerReviews would recommend using Submerchants is in a situation where the sites are effectively identical, save the language/region, and there is some limitation requiring this.

 

Scenarios

If a site meets any criteria in the first column of the table below, it must be implemented using separate Merchant Groups.

If none of the criteria are met in the first column, and one or more of the criteria in the second column are met, then you may implement the sites as Submerchants, with the caveat that if configuration needs change over time post-implementation, we might have to re-evaluate and create a new project to restructure the Submerchants into Merchant Groups.

Merchant Groups Submerchants
  • The sites are separate brands/retailers from one another.
  • The sites use the same Page IDs and languages, but do not wish to automatically display the same content.
  • The client wants to share content across the same products and languages, but wants more granular control.
  • The sites have completely different groups of users that do not need access to each others data.
  • There may be a need to be able to change display-related settings on one site without impacting the other.
  • The client needs Merchant-Specific Questions (MSQs) on their Write-a-Review form but doesn't want to share these questions across sites with the same locale.
  • The sites use the same locale but want to have different localizations.
  • There may be a need to have multiple locales under that site's umbrella now or in the future.
  • The site(s) are different locales of the same brand/retailer (i.e. iRobot UK, iRobot FR, iRobot DE, etc.).
  • The sites use the same Page IDs and languages and there is a desire to automatically display the same content between both sites.

 

 

 

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