iParsys-like behavior with layout containers?

[B_Stockwell]

I am building out a suite of templates to use on various websites.  We are a very large educational institution with 15 subdomains and 100+ offices which share the same components, but will all need their own branding--I have a header component that has some simple configuration (office name, dropdown navigation) options that need to be inherited down to child pages from each site's homepage. (I face similar challenges with sidebar content and footers).

I'm beginning to realize that these templates and layout containers don't support inheritance behavior like the old iparsys did, given the structure of the new pages and the lack of consistent names (at least not out of the box). Maybe I'm missing something quite big, but the only way I can see being able to support such a wide range of sites using the editable templates would be to build out a suite of templates for each office.

I'd really like to use the editable templates, but can't support ~150 different sets of templates (homepage, secondary, landing, content, etc...).

Ideally,  I would build out one set of templates. Then uses would configure their headers and footers on their toplevel pages and those settings would be inherited down. The only alternative I've thought of is to have inheritance behavior built into the components themselves, but that's untenable, as I'd need to add this functionality to every component individually, I think this is an unsustainable blending of purposes of a component (why should a text component manage inheritance?).

Is there a better way to do this that doesn't mean creating 150 templates suites or adding inheritance behavior directly to the templates?

I'm in AEM 6.2 right now, but will be upgrading in the next several months.

[om_vineet]

Hi There,

As haven't worked much on Template Editor functionality (editable templates), so not sure how to make iparsys kind of functionality working there but please have a look at Content Fragment/Experience Fragment which you can use in your template. Essentially you create a content/experience fragment once and then use them on the template, that way you don't need to create template per brand. Content fragment should be chosen if layout from one brand is different than other and Experience fragment if layout is mostly the same.

[kautuk_sahni · Accepted solution]

+1 with om_Vineet.

Please have a look at this video :- Adobe Experience Manager Help | Using AEM Experience Fragments

You can also convert existing components to Experience Fragments and can create a variations of it and can use it cross channel.

Content fragments :- Adobe Experience Manager Help | AEM 6.3 Sites: Content Fragments

Content Fragment VS Experience Fragment :- Adobe Experience Manager Help | Understanding Content Fragments and Experience Fragments in AEM

So Use Template Editor with CF or EF .

I hope this will help.

~kautuk

[rajput-ankur]

@Kautuk_shani and @om_vineet, I am not able to understand that how does this resolve the given use case?? If we keep the XF component locked on the template then the same XF will be used on all the brands and if we keep it unlocked then we have to author the XF path on all the pages. How can we solve this?

[smacdonald2008]

I agree with the comments here. Template Editor is basically for design used in a site - not across hundreds of sites.

[kautuk_sahni]

Confirmed: - Iparsys doesn't work in template editor based pages..

[vishakhav479782]

Is there any update on this?

[iainc65537558]

Do you know if there is an approach within dynamic templates (either 6.3 or 6.4) that will provide similar functionality? 

We use iparsys quite a bit to provide a consistent look across parts of our site, but would like to move to dynamic templates.