Thursday, February 7, 2019

Create a variations site

Create a variations site

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As a site collection administrator, you can create target variation sites and organize them into a variation site hierarchy. In a variations site hierarchy, the source and variation sites are one level down from the variation root site. All the content that is copied from the source variation site to the target variation sites is located in the Pages library of the source variation site.

What do you want to do?

Learn about variations sites

Use labels to create source and target sites

Create the source variation site

Create target variation sites

Create a variations site hierarchy

Add a new variations site to an existing site hierarchy

Choose a page layout for a specific variation site

Learn about variations sites

As a site collection administrator, you can create target variation sites and organize them into a variation site hierarchy. In a variations site hierarchy, the source and variation sites are one level down from the variation root site. All the content that is copied from the source variation site to the target variation sites is located in the Pages library of the source variation site.

When you specified the name and location for the variations home site on the Variations Settings page, you established the variations root site. The variations root site is the single URL that redirects site visitors to the appropriate variation site based on the settings of their web browser.

Note:  You specify the variations root site URL in the Variations Settings page, which must be configured before you can perform the procedures in this topic.

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Use labels to create source and target sites

You create the source and variation target sites by creating labels on the Variation Labels page. A label, in turn, creates a site.

For example, if you want four language variations of your site, you must create four labels, one for each language.

You designate one label as the source label, from which the variations feature will create your source variation site. The source site should be the one where content that you want to appear in target variation sites enters the system. For a multilingual site, you might want to use the primary language of your organization as the source label.

Note:  There can be only one source label, and after you've specified the source label, you cannot change it to another one without deleting the source label and breaking all existing source-target relationships.

The remaining labels are the target labels, which the variations feature creates as target sites.

After you create your initial source and target sites, use the Create Hierarchies command to create a variations site hierarchy. After you create the initial variations hierarchy, you can add a new target variations site at any time using the Create Hierarchies command.

If the source variation site has content in the Pages library, or if it contains sites below it in the site hierarchy, those pages and sites are created on all new target variation sites.

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Create the source variation site

  1. Click Site Actions and then click Site Settings.

  2. On the Site Settings page, under Site Collection Administration, click Variation labels.

  3. On the Variation Labels page, click New Label.

  4. In the Label and Description section, type the name you want in the Label Name box.

The name you use will be the string that is used in the URL. If you're working with multiple languages, it's a good idea to identify the language in the label name. For example, use EN for English, FR for French, and DE for German.

  1. In the Description box, type a description to help users understand the purpose of the label. For example, you might type "English".

  2. In the Display Name section, type a name in the Display Name box. Display names are usually localized versions or user-friendly versions of a label.

You'll use the display name again when you work with the site hierarchy, so it's a good idea to make it recognizable and easy to remember. For example, you might type "English" here, as well.

  1. In the Locale section, select the locale for the variation. The locale determines the formatting for items such as date, time, and currency, as well as how users are redirected from the root site according to the settings in their Web browser.

  2. If you have Language Packs installed on your server, you can click the Language box to select a language. This will dictate what language the variation label's site user interface (not content) will be provisioned in.

  3. In the Hierarchy Creation section, select the portion of the source hierarchy that you would like to copy. Do one of the following:

    • To create a hierarchy of publishing sites and all pages, click Publishing Sites and All Pages.

    • To create a hierarchy of just publishing sites, click Publishing Sites Only.

    • To create a hierarchy at the root, click Root Site only. (Only a top-level variation site will be created, no sub-sites or pages.)

  4. Select the Set this variation to be the source variation check box.

  5. In the Select the Publishing site template you want to use box, select the template to use to build this site, and then click OK.

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Create target variation sites

  • To add target sites, simply repeat steps 1-8 from the procedure above for each target variation site you know you're going to want.

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Create a variations site hierarchy

The next step is to associate the source and variation sites with one another and with the variation root site, which you do by creating the variations site hierarchy.

  • On the Variation Labels page, click Create Hierarchies.

The Variations feature will create your site hierarchy when your server computer is scheduled to perform bulk tasks of this type. Because creating variations sites is a resource-intensive task, the default time for site hierarchies to be created is between midnight and 3 a.m. in your server's time zone. If you must have your site hierarchy available to work with before that, you can ask your farm administrator to click Run Now for the Variations Create Hierarchies timer job after you have specified all the labels that you want created.

Tip:  You can monitor the progress of the Create Hierarchies command by clicking Variations Logs on the Site Settings page.

Now that you've created a variations source and target, you or your site users will be redirected from the root variation URL to the language that matches your browser's current language preferences. You or your target site owners can begin working with the content in the Pages libraries.

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Add a new variations site to an existing site hierarchy

After you create the variations site hierarchy, you can add a new target variations site at any time.

  • Open the Variation Labels page, add the new label, and then click Create Hierarchies again.

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Choose a page layout for a specific variation site

You might want to use a different page layout for every variation label. For example, you would probably want to use different page layouts if some of your languages read from left-to-right and others read from right -to-left. You can choose a page layout for a variation site by specifying a preferred layout in the Master Page Gallery.

  1. On the top-level site of your site collection, click Site Actions and then click Site Settings.

  2. On the Site Settings page, under Galleries, click Master pages and page layouts.

  3. Point to the page layout you want the variation site to use and then click Edit Properties in the ribbon.

  4. In the Variations section, under Available Labels, select the label to which you want this layout to apply.

  5. Click Add to move the label to the Labels for Layout box.

  6. Click OK, and then check in the file.

Note:  Changes to page layouts are subject to the versioning and approval process in effect in the Master Page and Page Layout Gallery, which means that, for your changes to take effect, you may need to check the master page in and get it approved.

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