Sites & Channels Configuration

On the  hosts configuration page we mentioned that a mount has an optional hst:channelpath property, which is the absolute path where the channel information can be found. Only those mounts that point to an existing channel will be shown in the channel manager overview. The channel nodes are configured below /hst:hst/hst:channels.
Below /hst:hst/hst:sites the hst:site nodes are configured. An hst:site glues together:

1. A mount
2. An absolute content location for the mount through property hst:content
3. A sitemap and optionally the HMVC configuration for the mount

On the  hosts configuration page you can read that a mount refers through an  hst:mountpoint property to an  hst:site. The hst:site refers to an absolute content location through the property hst:content. It also refers to a sitemap and HMVC configuration below /hst:hst/hst:configuration either by an explicit property hst:configurationpath or by naming convention: in that case the node name of the hst:site node is used to lookup the node with the same name below /hst:hst/hst:configuration. Putting it all together for a single channel in a setup having local development environment and production environment combined, the configuration looks for example as follows:

+ hst:hst
|  + hst:channels
|  |   + example
|  + hst:configurations
|  |   + example
|  + hst:hosts
|  |  + dev-env
|  |  | + localhost
|  |  |    + hst:root
|  |  |        - hst:channelpath = /hst:hst/hst:channels/example
|  |  |        - hst:mountpoint = /hst:hst/hst:sites/example
|  |  + prod-env
|  |    + com
|  |       + example
|  |         + www
|  |            + hst:root
|  |               - hst:channelpath = /hst:hst/hst:channels/example
|  |               - hst:mountpoint = /hst:hst/hst:sites/example
|  + hst:sites
|     + example
|         - hst:content = /content/documents/example
+ content
   + documents
      + example
         + common
         + news
         + …

From the configuration above, we can see that the both http://localhost and http://www.example.com resolve to the mount ‘ /’ ( hst:root) and that that mount gets

1. its channel info from /hst:hst/hst:channels/example
2. and the hst:site node from the mountpoint /hst:hst/hst:sites/example. The site node in turn indicates that the content for http://localhost and http://www.example.com will be found below /content/documents/example. Since the hst:site node does not have an explicit property hst:configurationpath, it will get its sitemap configuration and HMVC configuration name convention based, i.e. from /hst:hst/hst:configurations/example.