Editable Templates with multiple sites

[#1]

We are investigating moving from static to editable templates. We are struggling to reconcile a few items, however and are looking for some advice on best practices and recommendations.

Background Information:

• We are hosting around 200 unique sites in AEM
• We we likely be adding another 200-300 sites
• All of our sites share a few common things
  • Corporate branding at the top and bottom of all pages
  • They all leverage a common set of components
  • They share common functionality for things like form submissions
• All of our sites are using unique designs
• The majority of our sites are completely independent from each other in terms of content, design, and layout.
• We currently have ~10 static templates that are utilized to build these sites, and add new pages
• The sites typically have their header/footer setup on a root page and these are inherited down using iparsys components currently

While researching editable templates we have been given the impression that these are really architected towards creating a set of templates per site. It also seems like the use of iparsys is no longer recommended and possibly not supported with editable templates.

As each of our sites would need between 6 and 10 templates we do not believe it would be sustainable to have a unique set of templates per site (templates would total in the thousands).

If we could get some feedback on these points, and some recommendations for how to manage/build editable templates in a scenario like ours that would be great.

[#2]

Hi,

To learn how to create and understand editable templates - see this HELPX community article:

Adobe Experience Manager Help | Creating an Adobe Experience Manager 6.4 website using Editable Temp...

And below is the document for more details on Page templates-

Page Templates - Editable

Regards,

Anubha

[#3]

Thanks Anubha for the response, we have previously reviewed these guides and documentation. Unfortunately none of the documentation really seems to cover Editable Templates in terms of hundreds of sites, they are all focused on building Editable Templates for a single site. So these do not help answer our questions.

[#4]

As per the description, you are having common components. Likewise, create a common template which will act as the template of template. Define policies for various sites based on the differences  and they will act like the design rules for static templats. Create various structural templates based on the shared template of template.

To be fair, avoid structural changes wherever possible and let layout container take care of it on a page by page basis.

[#5]

We have similar situation right now and I am looking into a solution for the above. it seem to me the design/policies are defined on template level and hence same template cannot be used on two different site with different design configuration. So solution I see is to create a set of templates per site which would result with big amount of templates. Did you find a solution for above, or did you end using static templates?