Applications

Optimizely Content Management System (SaaS) Applications settings lets you set up and manage multiple applications efficiently. This includes configuring preview settings, managing hostnames, and defining application roots for routing purposes. CMS (SaaS).

Unlike the approach where the front and back-end are tightly coupled, CMS (SaaS) does not have a bias regarding how to construct, organize, or manage routes (paths that determine how an application responds to a client request for a particular endpoint). This flexibility makes CMS (SaaS) more adaptable to let you design the routing in the way best suited to your use cases.

Application benefits

Create applications in the following scenarios to ensure that CMS (SaaS) remains organized, scalable, and aligned with your specific business needs:

• Isolated Management – Manage each application independently with specific configurations, settings, and content structures.
• Enhanced Organization – Keep the CMS organized, especially when dealing with multiple applications or projects.
• User Experience – Improve navigation and content management, making it easier for developers and marketers to work on specific applications without interference.
• Flexibility – Use a headless CMS approach, letting you build applications without being tied to a traditional CMS structure.
• Scalability – As your business grows, add applications to scale with your needs.

When should I create an application?

• Launch a new application – Create a separate application to manage independently from other applications.
• Multi-application management – Manage multiple applications under a single CMS instance by setting up each application as a separate application, providing better organization, dedicated settings, and easier-to-manage content for each application.
• Headless CMS implementation – Create an application to manage different front-end applications that consume content from CMS (SaaS) when you are implementing a headless CMS configuration (where the front end is decoupled from the back end).
• Marketing and campaign applications – Create an application to ensure that applications have their own specific configurations, content, and tracking for temporary or permanent marketing campaign applications.
• Internationalization – Create a separate application to manage localization settings for different regions or languages and content more efficiently.
• Development and preview environments – Create a separate application when you want to configure development or preview environments for new features to maintain a clean separation from the production environment.

Create an application

1. Go to Settings > Applications.

2. Click Create Application.

   

   • Application Name – Enter the name of the application (analogous to a website). Must begin with a letter and contain only alphanumeric characters. Click change to modify the automatically generated API ID.

     

   • Choose Start Page – Select the start page from the content tree. 

   • From Existing – Select a start page from the page tree.

     

   • New – Select a start page from a list of Experiences and Page Types.

     

3. Click Create Application. The application is added to the Applications list.

Configure an application

1. Click the name of an application in the Application list (or select More (...) > Edit) to configure the application. The Settings window displays.

   
   • You can change the application name or the application's start page.
   • You can delete the application and remove it from the Application list.

2. Select Advanced > Hostnames to configure the application further. You can edit an existing hostname or create another one. Configuring hostnames in CMS (SaaS) ensures that previews work correctly and links in Optimizely Graph are accurately resolved.

3. Click Add Hostname to open the Add Hostname panel.

   
   • Hostname – Enter a unique name of between 2 and 225 characters (letters, numbers, periods, underscores, hyphens, and an optional port number such as hostname:8080) for a new primary host. Do not include http:// or htpps:// in the name; use the Use a Secure connection (HTTPS) checkbox for that.
   • Use a Secure connection – Select for HTTPS. Clear for HTTP.
   • Locale – Select a locale.
     • Only one hostname can be primary per locale. If the selected locale already exists for another hostname, you are asked to confirm that you want to change the primary hostname for the selected locale. For example, if Oldtown has a locale of English (en) and you add a Newton hostname with locale English (en), you are asked to confirm changing the primary hostname from Oldtown to Newton.
     • To have URLs indexed without a language segment (transforming example.com/en/my-page to example.com/my-page), map the hostname to the desired language. For example, map example in example.com to the language en. 

4. Click Add. The hostname is added to the list.

   

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Note

If you change hostnames, go to Settings > Scheduled Jobs and run the Optimizely Graph Full Synchronization job to update links for all content items.

Delete an application

1. Click the name of an application in the Application list (or select More (...) > Edit) to configure the application. The Settings window displays.
2. Click Delete Application.
3. Confirm the deletion. CMS (SaaS) removes the application from the Application list.