A multi-tenant CMS is a centrally hosted CMS instance with one central database serving multiple “tenants” or, more simply, sites. Since it allows you to host multiple sites on a single instance, it allows for sharing content, resources, and files.

This means that brands can scale with additional websites and applications – whether these sites share the same brand resources or completely separate. The infrastructure of a multi-tenant is specifically optimized to scale with thousands of sites and heavy resource usage.

Now, let’s discuss the best practices you need to follow before implementing one.

Plan Ahead

Devising a plan before implementing any solution is a must if you want things to go smoothly. A plan builds confidence and gives every person involved in the project a clear view of what needs to be done to implement the tools correctly.

Ask yourself and your stakeholders these three questions:

• What kind of websites and apps will your multi-tenant model include?

• What kind of elements do your websites require?

• Are some of these elements shareable, or are they unique?

Define Your Content Architecture

A major benefit of multi-tenancy is the ability to create content once and reuse it across sites. Once you have a plan for your global site strategy, it’s time to define the specific content types to be shared across your digital properties. 

1. Define the content types you plan to structure and reuse.

2. Think about all of the ways a particular content type may be displayed—in a product listing, detail page, banner ad, app vs. website, etc. 

3. Define the granular fields for each content structure– Titles/Headlines, short descriptions, long descriptions, images, etc. 

4. Plan for how content will be sorted, curated, or related. Will you need consistent categories or tags? What relationships will there be between content types, like authors and articles or products and instruction guides, etc.? 

Leverage Pre-approved Content Blocks

With pre-approved structured content blocks, your marketing and development teams can easily roll out campaigns or new websites. Content blocks that have already been authorized and templated can be used to maintain consistency and streamline workflows, reducing the time that needs to be spent back and forth between different users or departments.

Enlist The Right Multi-Tenant CMS

If you followed the previous suggestions, it’s time to select the CMS for the job. A CMS that separates content from presentation allows you to create content once and repurpose it as many times as possible across platforms, ensuring that you send a consistent message to every channel and site.

With a multi-tenant CMS, you store data in a central location from which all the connected sites can pull, which is a must for businesses with multiple digital instances that share content.