Running multiple sites from one workspace

Some organizations run more than one site (multiple venues, sub-brands, education arms, festivals, partner properties) and need each one to feel distinct while sharing the underlying content. Basker supports this as a multi-site setup: a group of sites in one workspace, each with its own theme, brand identity, and domain. Shared content flows between them where it makes sense.

What it is

A multi-site setup is a group of Basker sites that share a workspace. Each site:

• Has its own theme, look, and visual identity.
• Has its own domain (or several).
• Has its own settings and access rules.

What they share:

• Content that is relevant across the group: events, people, venues, organizations, and any other content type the group has chosen to share, either item by item or always across every site.
• A single editorial workspace: staff can work across the sites they have access to without switching account or signing in twice.

When you would use it

Common shapes:

• A presenting organization with multiple venues, each with its own public-facing site.
• An umbrella organization with sub-brands that need distinct identities: a main program plus an education arm, or a season-long festival plus its year-round program.
• Affiliated partner organizations that program together but maintain separate audiences.

The multi-site model is right when the content overlaps but the brands should not. If you only have one brand, you do not need a multi-site setup: a single Basker site with the right content model will do.

Shared content with provenance

When a piece of content is shared across the group, it carries provenance: editors can see which site originated it and where else it is used. A shared item has a single source of truth, so a change made to it shows up everywhere it is used. The group controls who is allowed to make that change (see Who can see and edit shared content below).

The group decides which content types are shared, and there are two ways content can be shared:

• Pick-and-share content: for these types, an editor chooses which individual items to share with other sites in the group. Each item can be shared with specific sites. The rest of that type stays private to the site that owns it. Useful when only some events, people, or venues belong on more than one site.
• Always-shared content: for these types, every item is automatically visible to every site in the group, with no per-item choice. Useful for content the whole group should always see, like a shared roster of people or venues.

Each content type is configured as pick-and-share or always-shared when the multi-site group is created. Some setups share events, people, and venues (the long-lived editorial backbone) while keeping pages and posts site-specific. Others share more, depending on how integrated the brands are.

Who can see and edit shared content

Working with content shared from other sites is controlled by its own permissions, separate from the role a person holds on their own site:

• Seeing shared content: a person needs the "view shared" permission for a content type before items shared from other sites appear for them at all.
• Editing shared content: editing an item that originated on another site (including any always-shared item) requires the "manage shared" permission for that content type. Without it, a person can see shared items but not change them.

Because these permissions are granted per content type, the group decides who can edit shared items: a person might be able to edit shared people but only view shared events, for example. This keeps a single shared item consistent everywhere it is used. Only people the group has granted "manage shared" can change it.

Brand-level access for staff

Staff do not automatically have access to every site in the group. Access is granted per site, and a staff member can have a different role on each. A blog manager on the main site might be an administrator on the education arm. A freelancer can be scoped to one site only.

See Roles and permissions for how roles work across sites.

Setting up a multi-site

Multi-site setups are configured by Basker support. Configuring one involves groundwork around shared content types, branding, domain routing, and access scoping that happens once at the platform level. Contact sales to scope a multi-site arrangement.

Where to go next