See also: Styles, Style templates, Company accounts

If the Multisite module is licensed, Site configurations can be defined, with the help of which a Lobster Data Platform / Orchestration system can be presented to different user groups with a specific appearance depending on the URL used for the call.

The Site configurations menu item (administration/designer/siteConfig) opens a view that combines an overview for entities of the 'Site configuration' type (core:SiteConfig) with the associated default input form for accessing a selected site configuration:

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Wozu benötigt man eine Site-Konfiguration?

Styles and Style templates offer extensive possibilities for defining the appearance of Lobster Data Platform / Orchestration.

Each Lobster Data Platform / Orchestration login refers to a specific company account, which can optionally refer to a specific 'style' for display within a session (see Input forms for company accounts).

Site configurations also offers the possibility to assign a specific 'style' (and some other features) before the actual login takes place, i.e. when the Company of session is not yet defined.

The assignment is always based on an evaluation of the URL used to access Lobster Data Platform / Orchestration. Specifically, the domain name or an alternatively used IP address is evaluated.

Examples: The section of the URL relevant for the assignment of site configurations is underlined in each case.

https://www.domain.net/portal
https://portal.doma.in:9443/test
https://32.168.123.45:443

Operating principle

Even if Site configurations is not bound to Association criteria, a kind of 'assignment' according to the all-matching principle (see Association criteria) takes place by evaluating the URL:

The Site pattern to be specified for each site configuration defines a regular expression that is applied to the domain name (or IP address) from the URL to decide whether this configuration is potentially relevant for the given context.
- The relevant section from the URL (domain name or IP address) must be completely characterized by the Site pattern:
  - Therefore, a Site pattern like portal does not address all domain names that contain the string portal.
  - For this purpose, the Site pattern .*portal.* would be more appropriate instead. The .* expression defines any number (≥0) of characters.
- Without specification for the Site pattern, a site configuration is always considered potentially relevant without any check.
Based on the properties of the potentially relevant Site configurations, the characteristics for all features of a session that can be directly influenced via Site configurations (see second section in the following table) are determined according to the following rules:
- Among all potentially relevant Site configurations that specify a specific value for a given feature at all, the one with the highest value for Priority is considered.
- If several Site configurations with the same Priority provide conflicting specifications for the same feature, the last configuration created (with the highest ID value) determines the specification for the feature in question.
- If none of the potentially relevant Site configurations defines a specific characteristic, the Lobster Data Platform / Orchestration default applies.

►NOTE◄ The characteristics of a session can therefore be determined by overlaying specifications in different Site configurations (and default values, if applicable). As the example (below) demonstrates, different configurations can result in the same 'experience' for users.

Properties

Each site configuration (SiteConfig) uses the following properties:

Properties	Field	Contents	Description	Example
... to control the relevance of a site configuration depending on the URL used for access
Site pattern	sitePattern	Regular expression	A regular expression that decides whether the site configuration is considered potentially relevant when Lobster Data Platform / Orchestration is accessed via a given URL. This is exactly the case if the domain name (possibly also an IP address) specified in the URL corresponds completely to this regular expression.	^myportal\.my-company\.com$ for a URL like https://myportal.my-company.com:443
Priority	priority	Integer	If the Site pattern qualifies multiple site configurations as potentially relevant to the URL in use, Priority determines their precedence with respect to the expression of the following characteristics.	-5 for a site configuration to be given priority over competing site configurations with lower priority values than -5 when influencing a particular feature.
... to control the appearance of the Lobster Data Platform / Orchestration session
Default style	defaultStyle	Style (`Style`)	The Default style defines the default 'style' (see Styles), which determines the appearance of Lobster Data Platform / Orchestration until the successful login of a session, for which after the login, depending on the Company of session, a style different from the Default style may take effect.
Site name	siteName	Text	The Site name defines the text for the HTML <title> tag that appears in the browser tab of the Lobster Data Platform / Orchestration session, among other things.
Favicon	favIcon	Text	The Favicon field optionally defines a relative path to an image file for the icon that appears, for example, in the browser tab of the Lobster Data Platform / Orchestration session in conjunction with the Site name.
External identity providers	externalIdentityProviders	Liste	As External identity providers, a Multiselect combobox element can be used to optionally select alias names of services configured for the Lobster Data Platform / Orchestration system for authentication, thereby enabling them for use during login. ►IMPORTANT◄ The multiple selection acts as a positive list, but as long as no selection is made, all configured services can be used during login. ►NOTE◄ If a site configuration should explicitly not support external identity providers, an 'uncovered' alias (e.g. a text value like 'None' or 'None') must be entered as the only input of the Multiselect combobox. The free text input must be completed as usual by clicking the [+] symbol on the far right of the Multiselect combobox element (or by pressing 'Enter'): ► [+] ►
Startup logo	startupLogo	Text	The Startup logo field optionally defines a relative path to an image file that was displayed in versions before 4.8 during the initial loading process for the Lobster Data Platform / Orchestration client. Versions after 4.8 and later show only a non-specific waiting cursor here.	This feature is no longer taken into account operationally as of version 4.8.

►IMPORTANT◄ The Site pattern often targets (partial) strings for domain names that contain the dot (.) as a separator character. Since the string specified as the Site pattern is interpreted as a regular expression, the dot is by default a placeholder for any character. For a period to be 'claimed' as a text character in a regular expression, either (see 'Example' below) a backslash must precede it (\.) or the dot must be enclosed in square brackets ([.]).

A Site pattern like loc.lh.st is therefore not only effective for the domain name loc.lh.st but also, for example, when the Lobster Data Platform / Orchestration server is accessed 'locally' via the domain name localhost. The Site patterns loc[.]lh[.]st or loc\.lh\.st on the other hand, strictly and precisely address only the domain name (loc.lh.st).
A Site pattern like .*.et is valid for all domain names that refer to the Top Level Domain (TLD) et (for Ethiopia). Since in this Site pattern not only the first but also the second dot is interpreted as a wildcard, this site configuration is also potentially relevant for all domain names with the TLD net. The Site pattern .*\.et, on the other hand, applies exclusively to Ethiopian domain names.

Example

For a Lobster Data Platform / Orchestration implementation, the following Site configurations are defined:
Priority	Site pattern	... URL condition	Favicon	Site name	Default style	External identity providers
10	.*\.de	Domain name ends with '.de'	leer	Mein Portal	DE	leer
5	.*\.eu	Domain name ends with '.eu'		empty	EUROPE	['azure']
0	myportal\.company\..*	Domain name starts with 'myportal.company.'		My Portal	GLOBAL	['none'] (see Note above)
For accesses with the specified URLs, this effectively results in the following feature combinations:
URL used for access		potentially relevant Site configurations (with descending priority)	Effective characteristic (per URL)
URL used for access			Favicon	Site name	Default style	External identity providers
https:/myportal.company.com		'green'		My Portal	GLOBAL	none
https:/myportal.company.eu:8443		'blue' > 'green'		My Portal	EUROPE
htpps:/myportal.company.de		'rot' > 'grün'		Mein Portal	DE	keine
Alternative Configuration: The same effective expressions can also be achieved (for the mentioned URLs) with the following Site configurations:
Priority	Site pattern	...URL condition	Favicon	Site name	Default style
0	myportal\.company\.de	Domain Name lautet exakt "myportal.company.de"		Mein Portal	DE	['Keine'] (s. Hinweis oben)
0	myportal\.company\.eu	Domain name is exactly "myportal.company.eu"		My Portal	EUROPE	['azure']
-1	empty	Any Domain Name		My Portal	GLOBAL	['none'] (see Note above)

With the 'alternative configuration', all Site configurations define all properties explicitly, but partly in agreement. This creates transparency, because exactly one configuration is always used completely.
The regular expressions for the Site pattern of the configurations 'red' and 'blue' are mutually exclusive. Therefore, the matching priority (0) is not a problem.
The omission of a Site pattern for the 'green' configuration makes it the 'default configuration', which is always potentially relevant, but with a priority value of -1 becomes effective exactly when no Site pattern for one of the higher-priority Site configurations takes effect.