Set up a multi-site SGEN deployment

How to create and manage multiple SGEN sites from one account

Running multiple websites from a single dashboard is one of the most common reasons teams upgrade to a higher SGEN plan. This guide walks you through setting up a multi-site deployment from scratch — from activating your SG-Dashboard account to confirming that each site is live on its own domain with the right team members in place.

Multi-site is not a feature you layer on top of a single-site workflow. It is a different deployment model. SG-Dashboard sits above individual sites — it is where you create new sites, manage billing across all of them, pull aggregate analytics, and control which users have access to which site. Each child site then has its own SG-Admin panel where content, pages, and settings live.

The work in this guide falls into three phases. First, you set up SG-Dashboard and create your sites. Second, you configure each site — its domain, its branding, its users. Third, you publish content on each site and confirm everything is live and separated correctly. Each phase has clear steps and a clear definition of done.

By the end of this guide, each of your sites will be live on its own domain, accessible from a single SG-Dashboard account, with the right users assigned to each site, and no content, media, or configuration bleeding from one site to another.

What is this for?

This guide is for anyone who needs to manage more than one website inside a single SGEN account. That might be an agency running separate sites for multiple clients. It might be a multi-brand company — like a parent company that operates three or four distinct brands, each with its own public site. It might be a business with regional or language-specific sites that need to stay editorially separate while sharing the same back-end account and billing.

Multi-site deployment lives inside SG-Dashboard, which is the parent layer of SGEN. SG-Dashboard gives you a single place to see all your sites, create new ones, manage billing, and monitor activity across the whole account. Each site below it is a fully independent SGEN site — it has its own SG-Admin panel, its own domain, its own set of pages and content, and its own group of users.

If you have never set up a SGEN site before, start with the single-site quickstart first. This guide assumes you already know how to navigate SG-Admin for a single site — it focuses on the coordination layer above that, which is SG-Dashboard.

Good use cases

Multi-site is the right deployment model in each of these situations.

• A parent company managing multiple sub-brands.

A multi-brand company runs three public-facing brands: a consumer retail site, a creative services arm, and a B2B ordering platform for trade partners. All three have different audiences, different design systems, and different content teams — but a single billing account, shared media library for brand assets, and a unified admin login for the founding team. Multi-site handles all of it without workarounds.

• A digital agency managing client websites.

An agency with ten clients does not want ten separate SGEN accounts — one login, one billing conversation, one SG-Dashboard with ten child sites. Each client gets their own SG-Admin panel, their own domain, their own user access. The agency account owner sees all ten. The clients only see their own. No cross-contamination. No shared access that was not explicitly granted.

• Multi-region or multi-language deployments.

A business expanding into a new market does not want the new region's site to share content with the home-market site — different pricing, different team, different tone. Two child sites under the same dashboard account. Each runs independently. Shared media library for brand assets, per-site product catalogs.

• **Franchise locations with shared brand assets but local

content.** A franchise model where the franchisor owns the dashboard account and each franchisee gets their own child site. The franchisor controls the shared media library with official brand assets. Each franchisee controls their own pages, blog posts, and events. No franchisee can see or edit another location's content.

• Staging and production as separate managed sites.

Some teams use multi-site to manage a staging version and a live version of the same site as two separate child sites within the dashboard — the staging site gets a subdomain and restricted user access, while the production site is the public-facing domain. The dashboard shows both in one place.

What NOT to use this for

• Do not use multi-site to manage a single website.

If you have one site and no plans to add another, a single-site SGEN account is the right setup. Multi-site deployment adds a layer of coordination — SG-Dashboard above individual SG-Admin panels — that adds no value when there is only one site to manage.

• Do not use multi-site for content syndication only.

If your goal is to publish the same blog post to multiple sites at once, multi-site is not the right tool. Multi-site creates independent sites that are managed from one place — it does not push content from a parent site down to child sites automatically. Content syndication requires a separate workflow, or manual duplication.

• Do not use multi-site for white-label reseller flows.

Reseller arrangements — where you are an intermediary selling SGEN accounts to end customers who then manage those accounts independently — require a different plan and a different setup. Multi-site within a single SG-Dashboard account assumes the account owner has administrative oversight over all child sites. If the end customer should own their site entirely and have no relationship with your account, this is not the right model.

• Do not set up a child site per content category.

A separate site for the blog, a separate site for the product catalog, a separate site for the events page is not multi-site — that is a single site with multiple content areas. Use pages, custom objects, and the blog system within one SGEN site rather than fragmenting your content across multiple sites.

How this connects to other features

Multi-site deployment touches several features that you will use both at the dashboard level and at the per-site level.

• SG-Dashboard — This is the parent surface. It is where

you create child sites, see all sites at a glance, manage billing for the whole account, and access account-wide settings. You spend most of your setup time here.

• SG-Admin (per site) — Once a child site is created in

SG-Dashboard, each site has its own SG-Admin panel. This is where per-site content, pages, settings, and design live. The work in the admin is identical to managing a single SGEN site — it is accessed through the dashboard rather than directly.

• Users and permissions — User management has two levels

in a multi-site deployment. Dashboard-level users have access to the SG-Dashboard and can see all sites. Site-level users are assigned to one or more specific child sites and only see the admin panels for those sites. Give the founding team dashboard-level access and give content writers site-level access to the one or two sites they work on.

• Media library — Each child site has its own media

library by default. If your plan includes a shared media library, you can upload brand assets once and make them available to all child sites. Use this for brand assets — the same logo, brand photography, and design files appear across all sites without re-uploading to each one.

• Templates — If your plan supports cross-site template

sharing, you can create a page template on one site and apply it to others. This is useful for maintaining visual consistency across brands that share a design system. Each site can still override a shared template with per-site customizations.

• Billing and plan management — Multi-site accounts have

a single billing relationship with SGEN. You manage your plan, site count, and payment method from SG-Dashboard. Adding a new child site may count against your plan's site limit — confirm your plan limits before starting this guide.

Before you start

Before opening SG-Dashboard, confirm and gather these things.

Confirm multi-site is on your plan. Multi-site deployment requires a plan that supports multiple sites. Check your current plan in SG-Dashboard under Account, then Billing. If your plan shows a site limit of one, you will need to upgrade before adding a second site. Contact your SGEN account manager if you are not sure which plan tier is right for your site count.

List the sites you are creating and their domains. For each child site, know the site name, the domain it will live on, and whether that domain is already registered and pointing to your DNS provider. Domain propagation can take up to 24 hours — the earlier you have your domains sorted, the earlier your sites will be live and verifiable.

For example, three sites and their domains might be:

• Main site — yourbrand.com
• Studio site — studio.yourbrand.com
• Wholesale site — wholesale.yourbrand.com

Decide which assets are shared versus per-site. The most common decision is whether to use a shared media library. If your sub-brands share photography, logo files, or other visual assets, the shared library saves you from re-uploading the same files to each site. If each brand has a completely separate visual identity with no shared files, per-site libraries are cleaner.

List who needs access to each site and at what level. For each person on your team, know whether they need dashboard-level access (they see all sites) or site-level access (they see only one or two specific sites). Avoid giving everyone dashboard-level access — it creates a cleaner operational model when each content editor only sees the site they work on.

Have your DNS credentials handy. Connecting a domain to a child site requires you to add a DNS record at your registrar. You will need login access to your DNS provider (GoDaddy, Cloudflare, Namecheap, or wherever your domains live). SGEN will show you the exact records to add during the domain connection step.

Where to go

Go to SG-Dashboard and click Sites in the left sidebar. The Sites list shows all existing sites on your account. If this is your first time setting up a multi-site deployment, the list may show only one site, or it may be empty if you are starting fresh.

Click Add New Site at the top right of the Sites list. The new site creation form opens. This is where the setup begins.

Steps — Set up your multi-site deployment

These steps take you from an empty SG-Dashboard to a live multi-site deployment with each site on its own domain.

1. Create your SG-Dashboard account or confirm it is active

Open your browser and navigate to your SGEN account. If your account is already on a multi-site plan, SG-Dashboard is accessible from the top of the left sidebar. If you see SG-Dashboard in the navigation, click it to open the dashboard view.

If you do not see SG-Dashboard in your navigation, your current plan does not include multi-site. Go to Account then Billing and upgrade to a plan that supports the number of sites you need. The upgrade takes effect immediately and SG-Dashboard appears in your navigation.

Confirm the SG-Dashboard home screen shows your account name, your current site count against your plan limit, and a Sites section in the left sidebar. These three elements tell you the dashboard is active and connected to your account.

2. Add your first child site

In SG-Dashboard, go to Sites and click Add New Site. Fill in the site name and primary domain. Use the name your team will use to identify this site inside the dashboard — not necessarily the public-facing brand name, though they can match. For example, the first new child site might be Wholesale Site at wholesale.yourbrand.com.

Choose a starting point for the site. Blank site creates an empty SGEN install. Copy from existing site copies the settings (globals, theme, navigation structure) from one of your existing child sites — useful when two of your sub-brands share a design system. Use saved template applies a previously saved site template.

Set the timezone to match the editorial team that will manage this site. Scheduled content and activity logs use this timezone.

Click Create Site. SGEN creates the child site and adds it to your Sites list. The site is not yet accessible on its domain — the domain connection step comes next.

Repeat this step for each site you are adding.

3. Connect the domain for each site

In the Sites list, click the site name to open its detail page. Find the Domains section and click Connect Domain.

SGEN displays the DNS records you need to add at your registrar. The records are typically one or two A records or CNAME records pointing to SGEN's servers. The exact values depend on your plan and region — copy them from the screen rather than typing them, because a single character error in a DNS record causes the domain to not resolve.

Log in to your DNS provider and add the records SGEN shows you. For a subdomain like wholesale.yourbrand.com, you add a CNAME record for wholesale pointing to the value SGEN provides. For a root domain, you add an A record.

After adding the DNS records, return to the domain settings in SGEN and click Verify. SGEN checks whether the records are live. DNS propagation can take anywhere from a few minutes to 24 hours — if verification fails immediately after adding the records, wait 15 minutes and try again.

4. Configure per-site users and access levels

With the sites created and domains connected, set up user access for each site. Go to SG-Dashboard then Users in the left sidebar. You see two tabs: Dashboard Users and Site Users.

Dashboard Users have access to SG-Dashboard itself — they can see all sites, create new sites, and manage billing. Add only team members who need this level of oversight. Keep dashboard-level access to the founding team and no one else.

Site Users are assigned to specific child sites. Click Add Site User and select the child site from the dropdown. Enter the user's email address and select their role — Editor, Author, or Viewer depending on what they need to do on that site. The user receives an invitation email with a login link specific to that site's SG-Admin panel.

Assign each content team member to only the site they work on. Those users see and can edit that site's SG-Admin panel but cannot access the other sites on the account. This is the standard setup for a multi-brand or agency deployment — each team member works in their lane.

5. Publish your first piece of content on each site

With users assigned, open the admin panel for each child site. From SG-Dashboard, click the site name and then click Go to Site Admin. This opens the admin panel for that specific site — it looks identical to a single-site SGEN admin panel, because it is.

For each site, create and publish a piece of content to confirm the site is working and the domain is live. A simple test page or a short blog post is enough — the goal is not to build the full site, but to verify that the site is functional before handing it to the content team.

For the Wholesale Site, publish a landing page with the site's name and a brief description. Keep the content short. The goal is a live page at wholesale.yourbrand.com that confirms the domain, the content pipeline, and the publishing flow all work correctly.

6. Verify the live site on each domain

After publishing content on each site, open a private browser window and navigate to each domain. The domain should load the site you published — not a parked page, not an error, not a default SGEN placeholder.

Check three things on each site:

Domain resolves correctly. wholesale.yourbrand.com loads the Wholesale Site, not one of the other sites on the account. If the wrong site is loading on a domain, the DNS record is pointing to the wrong site. Return to SG-Dashboard, open the domain settings for each site, and confirm the domain is connected to the right one.

Content is present and per-site. The page you published in step 5 is visible. No placeholder content from another site has leaked onto this domain.

SG-Dashboard shows the correct site count. Return to SG-Dashboard and check the Sites list. All three sites should show as Active. The dashboard's aggregate stats panel updates within a few minutes of each site going live.

What success looks like

When the multi-site deployment is set up correctly, all of these things are true at the same time.

• SG-Dashboard shows all sites as Active. Opening the

Sites list in SG-Dashboard shows each child site with an Active status and the domain you assigned. No site is showing Pending, Suspended, or an error state.

• Each site loads on its own domain. Opening each domain

in a private browser window loads that site's content — not another site's content, not a parking page, not an SGEN default screen.

• Per-site users see only their site. A user assigned to

the Wholesale Site logs in and sees that site's SG-Admin panel. They do not see other sites in their navigation, and they cannot access those sites by modifying the URL.

• Dashboard-level users see the full picture. An account

owner or dashboard-level admin logs in and sees all three sites in SG-Dashboard — the aggregate stats panel, the Sites list, and the ability to navigate into any site's SG-Admin panel.

• No content bleeds between sites. A page published on

the Wholesale Site does not appear on the Main Site's blog feed or page list. Each site's content is isolated.

• Shared media is accessible from each site (if enabled).

If you set up a shared media library, assets uploaded there are visible and selectable from the media panel inside any of the three child sites' SG-Admin panels.

What to do if it does not work

• **A domain is not resolving — the browser shows a

"site not found" or parking page error. DNS propagation takes up to 24 hours. If you added the DNS records less than an hour ago, wait and try again. If it has been more than 24 hours, open SG-Dashboard, go to the site's domain settings, and click Verify DNS**. If verification fails, compare the records SGEN shows you against what is published at your DNS registrar. Even one character difference in a DNS record value will cause the domain to not resolve.

• A user can see sites they should not have access to.

This is usually a permissions level error — the user was added as a Dashboard User instead of a Site User, which gives them access to all sites. Go to SG-Dashboard, open the Users section, find that user, and check which level of access they have. If they appear in Dashboard Users, remove them from that level and re-add them as a Site User assigned only to the appropriate site. Send a new invitation link.

• **Shared media is not appearing inside a child site's

media panel.** Open SG-Dashboard and go to Account then Settings. Confirm that the shared media library is enabled and that the child site is included in the sites that can access it. If the setting is correct but the media still does not appear in a site's SG-Admin panel, log out and back in to refresh the session. If the issue persists, check with your SGEN account manager — the shared media library feature requires a plan that supports it, and it is possible the feature was not activated on your account even if it appears in settings.

• **SG-Dashboard is showing the wrong site count or a count

that has not updated.** SG-Dashboard's aggregate stats update on a short delay — typically under five minutes. If a newly created site is not showing in the count, wait a few minutes and refresh the page. If the count is wrong after 15 minutes, go to the Sites list directly. If all sites appear in the list as Active but the count panel still shows a stale number, this is a display cache issue — log out, log back in, and the count should correct itself.

• **Cross-site links are breaking — a link from one site

is resolving to the wrong site or a 404.** Links between child sites need to use each site's full absolute URL, not relative paths. A relative path like /about on a page at wholesale.yourbrand.com resolves to wholesale.yourbrand.com/about, not to the About page on yourbrand.com. If cross-site links are used, they must be written as full URLs. Check the content on the originating site, find the link, and update it to the full absolute URL of the target page on the other site.

• **A site was created but the admin panel is not

accessible. In SG-Dashboard, click the site name and look for the Go to Site Admin** button. If this button is missing or greyed out, the site may still be provisioning — this can take up to two minutes after creation. Refresh the page and try again. If the button is still unavailable after five minutes, contact your SGEN account manager — the provisioning step may have failed silently.

• **A user received the invitation but the invitation link

is expired or returns an error.** Invitation links expire after 48 hours. If a user did not accept the invitation within that window, go to SG-Dashboard, open the Users section, find the pending invitation, and resend it. The new invitation generates a fresh link with a new expiry.

Tips for a clean multi-site deployment

A few habits that prevent the most common issues when managing multiple sites from one account.

• Name sites clearly in the dashboard, not by domain.

A site named "Site 3" is easy to confuse with "Site 4" when you are moving fast in the dashboard. Use the brand name that everyone on the team will recognize — "Wholesale Site" rather than "ws.yourbrand" or "Site 2." Clear names reduce the risk of publishing content or making settings changes on the wrong site.

• Set timezones per site, not per dashboard user.

If your main team is in Sydney and a second team in Manila will manage a regional site, set the timezone on each child site to match the editorial team. Scheduled posts and activity logs use the site timezone — mismatched timezones cause content to go live at unexpected times.

• Do a cross-site access check after onboarding each user.

After sending a site-level invitation, ask the new user to log in and confirm what they see. They should see one SG-Admin panel, not SG-Dashboard. This two-minute check catches access configuration errors before they become support tickets.

• Keep shared media intentional.

A shared media library is convenient but creates a dependency between sites. If you delete an image from the shared library, it disappears from every site that used it. For images that are site-specific — product photos, page hero images, content thumbnails — upload them to the per-site media library. Reserve the shared library for assets that genuinely belong to the whole account: brand logos, brand color swatches, official brand photography.

• Use the domain verification tool before going live.

SGEN's DNS verification check is faster than waiting for your DNS provider's propagation timer. Run it from the site's domain settings page. If verification passes, the domain is resolving and the site is publicly accessible.